Focail Farraige
This ongoing series is based on Irish words related to the sea. These words hold more than definitions — they are a window into a different relationship to nature and the unknown. Using clay to connect with the Irish language has expanded my appreciation for both forms of expression and the perspectives they provide. In the series, I combine abstract and figurative techniques to fit the mythological and often whimsical flavor of the words.
I discovered many of these words through Manchán Magan’s Sea Tamagotchi project, which is an extraordinary effort to celebrate and record these words before they fall out of use. I highly recommend checking it out.
View more
Gestures
My first Gestures Installation, shown January 2023 at Adjacent to Life Gallery in New York City, is composed of 81 unique ceramic “gestures,” which show variations on closing, opening, and contorting our physical and emotional bodies. The Covid era was marked by unpredictable closures and openings that forced many of us into awkward shapes and configurations – often caught between acceptance and denial, surrender and grip. While the pandemic certainly dramatized these motions, the gestures featured here speak not only to a specific time period, but to the ongoing cycles and undulations of our lives — of curling and unfurling, constricting and releasing, and shapes we become in between.
View more
Gesture Generations
My July 2024 show at Adjacent to Life Gallery was described by writer Marisa Malone:
“Sigrid Wendel’s practice embraces nonlinear paths of discovery, responding intuitively to what emerges rather than imposing a narrative. This series of ceramic sculptures are the confluence of influences, the subconscious, and trust. Guided by the tug of intuition and a desire to build off her previous series, Gestures, these pieces began to materialize and ultimately take the shape of something deeply familiar to Wendel: that of her mother’s doodles.
Thin slabs of clay curl and drape gingerly against a solid shape, others cut angles more severe and energetically; while not intentionally setting out to echo her mother’s aesthetic form, the fact that this occurred was not altogether surprising. ‘The word that comes to mind is relief,” says Wendel, ‘oh that’s what I’ve been working on this whole time! I’m reinterpreting my mom’s unconscious style.’ Her mother’s doodles–sketches in the margins, designs in the borders of cards and notes–were impressed on Wendel and have transformed through her.
The transformation continues into the next generation as well, as Wendel was pregnant with her daughter while making this series. These sculptures are a translation, a dialogue between generations (mother and daughter) and mediums (drawing and clay), making visible the unseen imprint we leave on one another.
For Wendel, creating this work has been a testament to ‘trusting that the process means something, even if it's not precisely clear from the [start], and to trust that whatever I'm making is a product of all the things that are filtering through me.’ We can let this serve as an intimation for us as well.”
