Artists Registry
Easthampton MA United States
View
Artist's Statement
Statement of Work
The artist had lived in Manhattan for 22 years, but on September 11th, 2001, Dawn Siebel was in her new home in the mountains of Colorado. Like millions of Americans, she sat frozen in front of her TV watching the terrible day unfold. Around three o’clock that afternoon someone said, “We think that more than 300 firefighters died today.” For her, that one sentence brought all the horrors of the day emotionally home. They were the ones who ran into the buildings. Twelve days later, when The New York Times printed a two-page spread with pictures of all 343 firefighters, “better angels” was born.
More than 3000 hours were spent over six years to create the paintings, beginning with cutting and then burning the blocks of baltic birch on which the portraits are painted. The artist partnered with the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (firehero.org) and together they toured the paintings to ten U.S. cities in 2011 and 2012. Subsequently, Better Angels has been shown in Colorado Springs, CO and Springfield MA.
Abraham Lincoln ended his first inaugural address calling for the Nation to heal its wounds by appealing to “the better angels of our nature.” For the artist, these 343 firemen represent themselves, the FDNY, their selfless profession, and also - in the way of heroes - the possibility that each of us may rise to the “better angels” of our own nature.
Further information about the “better angels” exhibit is available at www.betterangels911.com. The artist also maintains a Facebook page for the project (www.facebook.com/betterangels911/) where one painting per day is posted along with a short anecdotal story about that firefighter. On this site, the images are posted by Company, so the men who worked together and responded together are once again shown together. With a few other stories woven in, it takes about a year to post all the men. Then the process begins anew.
Resume
Resume
dawn howkinson siebel
RÉSUMÉ
(a complete up-to-date resume can be found on the artist's website www.dawnsiebel.com)
SOLO EXHIBITIONS (since 2005)
Animalia Arno Maris Gallery, Westfield State Univ., Westfield MA 2016
Better Angels: The Firefighters of 9/11
Wood Museum of History, Springfield Museums, Springfield MA 2016
Endangered Western New England University, Springfield MA 2015
Animalia: The Endangered Hampden Gallery, UMass, Amherst MA 2014
Serial Art Easthampton City Arts, Easthampton MA 2012
Better Angels: The Firefighters of 9/11 11-city tour, May 2011 – Sept 2012
Ocean City MD, Baltimore MD, Atlanta GA, Cincinnati OH,
Clearwater FL, Raymond House Office Building - Washington DC,
San Diego CA, Las Vegas NV, San Angelo TX,
World Financial Center - NYC, Colorado Springs, CO
The Weight of History Old Firehouse Art Center, Longmont CO 2007
Biased Biographies Regis University, Denver CO 2005
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS (since 2010)
Pioneer Women MAP Gallery, Easthampton MA 2015
dECAde Easthampton City Arts, Easthampton MA 2015
Unbound, Vol. IV Artistree Gallery, Woodstock VT 2014
New England Collective IV Galatea Fine Art, Boston MA 2013
Unbound, Vol. III Artistree Gallery, Woodstock VT 2013
Amherst Biennial Multiple Sites, Amherst MA 2012
Unbound, Vol. II Artistree Gallery, Woodstock VT 2012
Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild Kleinart/James Art Center, Woodstock NY 2010
PUBLICATIONS & OTHER MEDIA (since 2005)
WGBY (Springfield MA PBS), “Connecting Point: 9/11 Firefighter Tribute,” artist interview with Carolee McGrath, 2/22/16, connectingpoint.wgby.org (video)
New England Public Radio (NEPR) “All Things Considered” interview with John Voci, and website video 2/2016 www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne1HU9EdNnY (video)
The Republican, January 12, 2016, “Heroes’ Lives Honored,” by Cory Urban, cover story, Section D: Living
Daily Hampshire Gazette, April 19, 2013, “Art People” column, “Hampshire Life Magazine” cover story, pp. 5, by Steve Pfarrer (images)
Daily Hampshire Gazette, Oct 11, 2012, “2012 Amherst Biennial”, Arts Section cover story, pp. 1 & 6,
by Steve Pfarrer (image)
Multiple TV & radio interviews 2011-2012, See www.betterangels911.com for links
Southwest Art, December 2008, “Best of the West” p.40 (image)
American Art Collector, 2008, Vol. 4, Book 2, p. 166, Alcove Books, Berkeley CA
Southwest Art, November 2007, “The Figure/Mirror Images” by Virginia Campbell pp. 100, 101 (images)
Denver Post, Denver CO, April 8, 2005, “Family Photographs Infuse Mixed Media Show,” by Kyle MacMillan, Denver Post Fine Arts Critic, p. 3FF (image)
BIOGRAPHY
Dawn Howkinson Siebel was born during a snowstorm in Lake County, Indiana, in 1950. Trained at Carnegie-Mellon, she moved to New York City in 1972 to be an actress, earned a Broadway credit, and quickly lost interest in the theater as a career. A class at the New School introduced her to batik and she fell in love immediately with its complexity and how it let her draw. This lead to 12 years as a dyer, beginning with batik t-shirts sold in craft fairs and ending with one-of-a-kind hand-painted silk clothing. She has a t-shirt in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution from the early days. A dozen years later she sold her collection of silk kimonos to Bergdorf Goodman then embarked on an 18-month trip around the world with a set of watercolors in her backpack. She fell in love with watercolor. For the next seven years, she painted watercolors at night with a day job in publishing. In 1994, she abandoned New York for Boulder, Colorado, and there, in a community of many working artists, she finally found the nerve to devote herself fully to art. Oil became her medium of choice in 1998. As an ex-New Yorker, she was moved to create a work of 343 oil paintings of the New York City firefighters who died on 9/11. She partnered with the National Fallen Firefighter’s Foundation and moved back to the east coast in 2010 to complete the paintings and work on all other aspects of what became a traveling exhibit. The project took three years and was phenomenally instructive, but it was also an abrupt creative change. She resettled in Easthampton MA in 2012 and by 2013 was developing a new body of work - again portraits, but now of the world’s endangered species. As a visual artist she is self-taught and always learning.