Joseph Seigenthaler

Born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1959, Joseph Seigenthaler currently resides in Chicago, Illinois, where he has exhibited his figurative sculpture for the past 20 years. He is married to the painter Anne Gilbert from Paris, France and they have three beautiful daughters, ages 17, 14, and 11 years old.  The artist is represented by Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago.

Having received the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1981 from the Memphis College of Art’s painting department, he soon began fabricating on a freelance basis life-size, realistic wax figures for various wax museums, primarily in Nashville and Tamworth, Australia. The technical processes gained from this three year period were to become influential on the development of his later exploration with large, over life-size figuration.

From 1984 to 1986 he attended the Appalachian Center for Craft in Smithville, Tennessee, where he became exposed to the possibilities of using fired clay as a medium for self expression. In 1987 he was awarded a three year tuition scholarship from Northern Illinois University, where in 1990 he received the Master of Fine Arts degree.

Seigenthaler has taught figurative clay and sculpture at the University of Montana, Missoula, Harold Washington College in Chicago, as well as the figure in clay at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The Virginia A. Groot Foundation awarded him their visual arts grant in sculpture in 1996, as well as a third place award in 1995. He was the recipient of a Regional Fellowship Award in sculpture from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1991 and a visual arts grant in sculpture from the Illinois Arts Council in 1990.

His work is included in numerous private collections and in the permanent collections of the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconsin, and Museo de Escultura Figurativa Internacional Contemporánea, Spain.