Solo Exhibition of Nicole Seisler, “The Places We Built” 

August 12-August 31st 

Artist Reception August 13th from 1-4:00pm 

The Places We Built is a new layer of Nicole Seisler’s ongoing project, Hand Pressed Souvenirs, which integrates social practice, ceramics, and the use of walking as an art-making tool. The project uses clay as the conceptual and material conduit for forging tangible, intimate connections between people and the places in which they live, work, and travel. Nicole uses customized field kits to bring blocks of wet porcelain on walks throughout neighborhoods where participants use the malleable material to make impressions of architectural details that visually and culturally define a place. These Hand Pressed Souvenirs, much like clay tablets of the earliest societies, become records of particular moments in history. One side of each ceramic object shows sharp details of architecture and design while the other side retains the lines and marks of the hand that produced it. The space between people and place is literally embodied by the raw clay and, once fired, it is permanently solidified. The growing collection of Hand Pressed Souvenirs maps our global cities and spaces through personal connections, stories, and memories.

Nicole’s exhibition at Gallery 1855 is a new iteration of this archival mapping process. Using the porcelain souvenirs as molds, Nicole casts new compositions in handmade paper, thereby forming fresh connections amongst the seven year old collection of souvenirs. This body of work serves as memories of memories, an archive of an archive of our shared experiences of place.