Jeffrey has an enlightening conversation with
Bill Siegal, owner and founder of the William Siegal Gallery in Santa Fe.
For over thirty years Bill Siegal has been assembling the world’s largest collection of fine ancient and antique Andean textiles dating from 750 BC to the 19th Century. His gallery also exhibits ceremonial objects and artifacts from Meso and South American Cultures, as well as objects from China’s Han and Tang Dynasties and Southeast Asia. Distinguished African and Indonesian textiles are also prominently featured.
The Gallery opened its new 5,000 square foot exhibition space in May of 2007, in which antiquities are now hung side by side with the works of outstanding contemporary artists, conveying sublime and timeless trans-cultural aesthetics.
The gallery is located in Santa Fe’s newly revitalized Railyard District, which is rapidly becoming the central locus of Santa Fe’s contemporary art scene.
In June, Lea Feinstein of ART NEWS said this about the William Siegal Gallery:
“With an informed eye, William Siegal has mixed contemporary art with antique textiles and ancient sculptural artifacts in a way that enriches both. In placing the old and new side by side, Siegal took them out of historical context and underscored their graphic analogies.”
Bill first became involved in textiles in 1971 working with the molas of the Cuna Indians of Panama. In 1974, he made his first trip to Bolivia in search of other textile art forms. He returned to La Paz, Sucre, Cochabamba, and Potosi several times in 1975. The weavings he found were of such technical excellence and beauty, he moved permanently to La Paz to study and collect on a full time basis.
By 1977, he was making long journeys throughout the 13,000 ft. high Altiplano with his associates. Using La Paz as a base, they traveled from one village to another buying what was available while learning as much as possible about this incredible and little-known art form. He visited every corner of the Altiplano over the next ten years. In 1988, Bill returned to the U.S. where he continued to study the ceremonial textiles of the Aymara.
In May, The Santa Fe Rape Crisis and Trauma Treatment Center produced a monologue series called The Testosterone Testimonials, which was similar to The famed Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler.
In this series of monologues however, the testimonials, as they are called, are self- written by the presenters themselves who were a diverse collection of community leaders from Santa Fe talking about what it means to be a man. The evening presentation was such a smash success that people have not stopped talking about it.
Bill Siegal was one of those presenters and gave a remarkable performance of his personal story. I enjoyed his presentation so much that I asked him if he would come on the Salon and perform it for us. He agreed, and so we are fortunate today to be able to hear Bills monologue from that evening as an introduction to the marvelous conversation that follows.
The Omni Art Salon theme music, When Angels Smile, is provided courtesy of Back To Earth
