Art Statement

I am is a self-taught ceramic sculptor whose work explores the intersection of art and nature using the themes of femininity, topography, and spatial philosophy. My forms are intuitive, providing emotional expression to the sensation of the organic: the human body, a fruiting mushroom, a river as it flows toward the sea. With a particular focus on vessels, I work to redefine the boundaries of this object and our conception of space—how we shape, occupy, and consider its potential. Concurrently, these works engage the viewer’s tactile senses, often inciting the desire to touch in order to fully experience their forms, as well as their textures and patterning. This emphasis on external elements compliments my twin interest in internal structures, which carry their own meaning. Growing up in the Alps, I was constantly engaged with the natural world through outdoor activities, which taught me to bring the outside in; to consider how I could convey its beneficial impact on my well-being into my interior spaces.

I draw attention to presence—the energetic occupation of space. I question the ways in which I was taught to inhabit the world, as a woman, as an artist, a daughter, and a mother. Just as readily as these roles attempt to structure our perspective and sense of value, my work criticizes exactly such expectations by providing an alternate language of expression, one in which I create forms with as much consideration as one chooses their words.

Bio

Nadia Stieglitz is a French-born, self-taught ceramic artist based in Charleston, SC. Although, since 2020, clay has been her primary medium, she has a formal background in photography, painting, graphic design, and feng shui, all of which influence her sculptural practice. She has exhibited work throughout South Carolina and online with Arts to Hearts Project and, most recently, in Florida, where she was a Finalist at the ArtBox Projects Miami competition. In 2022, she was a Visiting Artist at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, a program that features eight artists annually whose work contributes to a new understanding of art in the American South. Her work has been profiled in both Art Seen and Charleston Magazine. She has a forthcoming group exhibition with Artfields Competition in Lake City, SC, for which she has been selected two years in a row. Stieglitz now teaches ceramic classes at Studio Union in Charleston, where she moved her practice after working out of her kitchen for a year. She places particular emphasis on rekindling her students’ relationship to play, arguing that, even as an adult, it is both a fundamental right and a necessary joy.