Scott Zieher
Born in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Scott Zieher is a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee graduate with an MFA in poetry from Columbia University. In addition to publishing seven books of poetry he has directed ZieherSmith, his contemporary art gallery with his wife, Andrea. After 27 years in New York City, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee where they live and continue their gallery programming with his wife, Andrea and their three kids. He is also an adjunct at the Belmont University Watkins School of Art low residency MFA program.
My collage methodology has always been simple— collecting, collating and curating images chosen from (mostly) vintage materials, for years found solely on the New York City streets, with size, source or substrate dictating the parameters of my tendency to work in sequences, repetition and serial attempts to make use of a shape, color or sheaf of like-sized sheets.
Most of the material I use is old— books, magazines, ephemera and printed matter of any period is fodder. I disagree with any mandate that says nostalgia is a dirty word. Emotional attachment to a past we haven’t experienced is more complicated than mere dreamy sentiment or patriotic purity. I’m more interested in the connections between any arcana that might bring me closer—
Visually, aurally, mentally, psychologically, physiologically closer to having a beer and a sandwich with my father in a diner where the main source of light is a neon sign and the waitress’s name is Gladys and Schlitz is on offer as is the Braunschweig sandwich served with pickles, coleslaw and each table has its own jukebox featuring a brand new single by the Elmo Hope Trio.
Arp looked just a slight bit like my grandfather. My grandfather was a blacksmith in Port Edwards, Wisconsin and if you asked him what art or poetry was, he might just have been hard pressed to give any answer at all. His garden was art and the tools he forged with his own hands to tend the garden were art, and the wooden toolbox lined with pinups from the 1940’s in his basement?
Most definitely art of the highest order—he just called it all something different. Like lunch, spade, and box I wasn’t supposed to go digging in.
Exhibitions
