A Borderless World

Treacy Ziegler shares her thoughts on art, the evolution of her process and the unusual venues that have provided fodder for her work.

- By John O'Hern

Treacy Ziegler describes herself simply. “Fine artist. I am a multi-mediums artist working in painting, sculpture and printmaking.” She lives with her husband, sculptor Gary Weisman, on more than 80 wooded acres outside of Ithaca, New York. Their son, Jack, has moved on to win awards as a director and cinematographer in Toronto.

A short walk through the woods from their house is Treacy’s studio, expanded since I first visited nearly 30 years ago, and just a stone’s throw beyond is Gary’s studio and bronze foundry.

When I contacted her about writing an article about her and her work, she and Gary were in Toronto visiting Jack. To start the ball rolling, she referred me to an essay she wrote for the “Broad Street Review” in Philadelphia, where she had studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). In the essay, “When Words Get in the Way,” she writes, “Art is vast. And when I hear the adage, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words,’ I feel as if an act of piracy has been committed against art. It is the piracy of branding art as quantifiable and accountable to words; apparently accountable to a thousand words…Art is unknowable. It happens to me over and above my wanting, doing and thinking. What I intend and anticipate is irrelevant. It is the happening where I discover ‘wow’; that borderless world where art exists without why and just because.”