My personal life experience and my investigation of symbol formation in deep scientific
inquiry challenged me to question my most firmly held beliefs. Today, “not knowing”
informs my art-making.
I produce a variety of media including painting, sculptural forms and installation. In all
these works, I am concerned with unearthing the roots of being human as an aspect
of the coherent whole of existence.
In our increasingly high-speed virtual world, I go beneath the smooth and shiny surfaces
to immerse myself in great solitude and deep silence. I use my brushes and other tools
to quietly and patiently express the rawness, textures, and layers of a seemingly unending
process of unfolding -- of what I do not know.
Los Angeles-based art critic Shana Nys Dambrot has written the following about my work:
"Sigrid Orlet’s background in the field of Creativity Studies had her 'investigating
the complex nature of symbol formation in deep scientific inquiry. . . .' And her
moving and innovative mixed media paintings and sculptural installations give
literal and allegorical form to this conceptual foundation.
"Using hefty, dimensional materials like burlap, and dried plant roots, and favoring
a richly, fertile palette of earth and autumnal shades along with sensual, distressed,
painterly surfaces and salient pieces of text, Orlet both honors and generates the
symbolism of a kind of pagan art history.
"Spiritual rather than dogmatic, her work is experiential, multisensory, dimensional,
temporal, devotional, and scientific. In pursuit of an aesthetic beyond meaning,
it asks 'what happens when you go to a place of not knowing?' -- demonstrating
a willingness to question even one’s own most firmly held beliefs -- including
about what art can be."
In 2023, Los Angeles-based art historian, critic, and curator, Dr. Betty Ann Brown, wrote the following
about my work "A LIFETIME BURNING IN EVERY MOMENT II:
"Sigrid Orlet also refers to historical erasures. ...She understands how power structures privilege some people and devalue others. And how the devalued can be erased, not just physically, but also symbolically. Her "A LIFETIME BURNING IN EVERY MOMENT II" (2021), was built as a sculpture and photographed in an archival pigment print. The root ball of a burned tree is placed, almost precariously, on a wooden plinth covered in gold leaf. The gold leaf recalls the Japanese kintsugi process ...And it recalls Byzantine icons painted on gold leaf to indicate their heavenly status as well as church relics housed in gold-plated boxes (reliquaries). It also evokes the longtime European tradition of framing artworks in gold.
"We all know the phenomenon of tree rings. When a tree burns from the outside inwards, the flaming destruction eats away at the outside tree rings, thereby "erasing" the time they represent. "A LIFETIME BURNING..." honors the tree like a sacred figure, lamenting the loss of the tree and, by implication, the span of time lost in the destruction of the tree rings. The charred tree serves as a symbol for wounding and erasure, then, but it also points to endurance and survival. The tree has fallen, but its inner rings remain. Just as many immigrants and refugees may have lost both their innocence and their cultural status, but their true essence survives. Especially if they use art to expunge the losses and "invent alternate perceptions."
Artist-in-Resident at Studio Channel Islands Art Center 2012 - 2016
www.studiochannelislands.org
Member Los Angeles Art Association until 2016
http://www.laaa.org
Member Women's Caucus for Art, active
www.scwca.org/
Member National Museum of Women in the Arts
www.nmwa.org
Department of Cultural Affairs Slide Registry
Los Angeles, California
http://www.dcaslideregistry.com/artist.cfm?id=565
In 2016 Sigrid moved back to Europe for personal reasons.
She lives and works near Soest, Germany.