Overview
MEL ZIEGLER: Clear Skies offers equal representation of Ziegler’s current solo practice alongside his decade-long creative partnership with artist Kate Ericson. This is the first exhibition juxtaposing Ziegler’s work with work from the Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler Foundation archive.
As a collaborative duo, Ericson and Ziegler created a substantial body of public projects, site-specific installations, and mixed-media sculptures, all marked by a keen social conscience and understated humor. In 2005, a traveling retrospective exhibition titled America Starts Here, was organized by the Tang Teaching Museum and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As described by their respective curators, Bill Arning and Ian Berry, “Ericson and Ziegler redefined public art in a way that was welcoming to a diverse set of communities. Rather than impose a conspicuous work of art upon a site or situation, the artists devised projects that altered sites subtly, using poetic language and their idiosyncratic wit to illuminate mainstream American contexts and highlight individual community issues.”
