Siena Gillann Porta

NOVEMBER 2023:

Siena Gillann Porta, my name, is a cultural amalgam. My artist parents, Vincent Anthony Porta and Barbara Ann Gill were enamored of the Sienese painters of the Quattrocento, 14thc. (hence Siena). My father attended The Boston Museum of Fine Arts and was first cousin to Rocky Marciano; my Scotch-English, German American mother wanted my middle name to reflect her pre-DAR ancestors.

I was born in Manhattan in 1951. We lived on West 64th Street (primarily a neighborhood of the Latin diaspora, artists and musicians) until our neighborhood was torn down to build Lincoln Center. My family moved to the suburbs (Rockland County) when I was halfway through kindergarten. For a child it was an idyllic life; pet goats, dogs, cats, chickens, geese, flying squirrels in the attic of our small 1850’s house (part of the Underground railroad) friends and family, dance classes, local art exhibitions, flute lessons, a large garden, land to roam in, visits to “town” (Manhattan) where my father commuted to sell his popular textile designs, all basically organized by my mother, a Chicago Art Institute graduate who had hoped to paint scenic backdrops for exhibits at The Natural History Museum in NY. She was told her artwork was outstanding but available positions needed to go to WW2 veterans. (My mother became an environmental activist, teacher, photographer and served as the first Rockland County Environmental Director.)

Our early years were in part inspired by my mother’s memories of a pastoral, though not wealthy, childhood in Ridgefield Connecticut. But then at 12, I got sick with an aggressive form of mononucleosis, with relapses and my world changed. I went from being a very active young tween, a member of The Orange County Ballet School, to barely being able to walk around. So I began to draw and read obsessively, as my family collected and read books about everything. With two working parents and a younger brother in school, (David) I had seven very precious solitary months of daytime hours alone as I recovered (of course the school district provided tutors). When I returned to school the following year I was socially out of step with my peers. I received a scholarship to a private Day school (RCDS) but left after a year.

Travelling across country in a driveaway car with five other young people in 1967 I survived the summer of love in San Francisco, stumbling into the Zen Center founded by Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki, which began my lifelong love affair with Zen Buddhist practice. Back in NY I re-enrolled at The Art Students League and passed my GED credibly in order to enter college. I also studied at The Martha Graham School, The Herbert Berghoff School, joined the Michael Henry Mime Troupe, and wrote and performed in Off Off-Broadway venues. Living full-time on the lower Eastside, I worked at many entry level jobs while attending classes at The School of Visual Arts and The New School. My first husband and I also lived in San Francisco’s Haight district and in Baltimore as my then poet spouse (Anton Nicholas Marco) was finishing a master’s in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University. We later divorced when I finally attended a college program for a degree. All grist for the mill.

After racing through a BS (mcl) in Studio Arts through Brooklyn College, CUNY Honors, and studying with a very gifted faculty; Philip Pearlstein, Lee Bonticou, Lennart Anderson, Sylvia Stone, Lois Dodd and Paul Gianfagna, I won the Grebanier Drama award (entries were from graduate and undergraduates in all City campuses) and an International Women’s Year traveling slide award of my sculpture titled” Screaming Man”, through the Women’s Interart Center in midtown Manhattan. I was offered and took, a Full Graduate Fellowship and (p.t.) Teaching Assistantship at The Pennsylvania State University, earning an MFA (scl) in Sculpture (the third woman to do so there). My advisors, John Cooke and Stephen Porter were actively exhibiting artists. I was also fortunate to be able to draw from cadavers at Hershey Medical School through a grant from a local Pennsylvania Arts Council.

After graduation I returned home as my father’s cancer had seriously progressed. A gifted and sensitive man who had served in Patton’s 3rd army in WWll, my father suffered from PTSD, (though then they called it shellshock); he was a supporter of my mother and myself in all endeavors. Sadly, he missed my wedding six years later (by two months) to Robert Christopher Dell, my lifelong partner and collaborator. We met on a NY grants project called CETA/Arts Alive, where I accepted the position of Gallery Manager for The Rockland Center for the Arts.

My career as a visual artist has been defined by the need for full-time employment. For a few more years I cobbled together various jobs; illustrating maps, drafting and production design at Columbia University’s Lamont –Doherty Geological Observatory, graphic-design, illustration and drafting for a White Plains planning firm, teaching as an Adjunct Professor, etc. During this period, I was represented briefly by the A.B. Condon Gallery (commercial)on West Broadway in lower Manhattan and joined 14 Sculptors Gallery, a co-op in SOHO. In 1986 I became a Scenic Artist with USAL-829, painting and sculpting for numerous Broadway shows, The Metropolitan Opera, Feature films, Prime-time television, Netflix and Amazon. The production end of the entertainment industry expanded my access to media and to large scale projects that rarely exist in the world of fine arts.

As a member of both NOHO Gallery in the Chelsea district and 14 Sculptors Gallery, among others, I have had over fourteen solo shows and participated extensively in other group venues, exhibiting installations, painting, and sculpture throughout the U.S. and abroad through galleries, museums, The NY Parks Department and at colleges and universities. Public and private collections include The City of Hveragerdi, Iceland, The Hafnarborg Cultural Museum, The County of Rockland, NY, The University of Iceland Hveragerdi Agricultural College, The Cornwall Trust, GB, St. Philips Church, Norwalk, CT, The USA Kimura International Shukokai Karate Federation, Edison NJ, Rockaway Artist Alliance in Ft. Tilden at Jacob Riis National Park (2000-2021) and The Robert L. Yaeger Health Center, Pomona, NY.

Who's Who in American Art and Who's Who in the East have included me in their listings from the late 1980’s with reviews in The New York Times, Newsday, and The New York Art Review, among others. I am a grant recipient of The New York Foundation for the Arts, a New York State Council on the Arts decentralization grant and The United States Information Agency.

My Residencies include Brisons Veor in Cornwall, England, and Varmahlid Haus in Iceland 2010 and 2014. As an Adjunct Professor of Contemporary Art at Ramapo College of New Jersey (2001-2012) and as an Adjunct Professor of Art at St. Thomas Aquinas College (2000-2010) and while working as a Scenic Artist, I found that interaction with students and colleagues enlarged my understanding of the importance of articulate communication in the visual arts.

Recent selected group exhibitions include The Hudson Valley Museum through Art Inspiration International, The Carter Burden Gallery in Chelsea, The Hammond Museum, Blue Mountain Gallery, NYU’s Zerilli-Marimo Gallery, Prince Street Gallery, The Hampden Gallery at Amherst College (U Mass) with Outside the line Collective, Highbridge Park in Manhattan with 14 Sculptors Inc., sponsored by The New York Parks Dept., The Akin Museum, NYC Art in the Parks ,“14 Sculptors on the Rock” and One Artists Space in Tribeca with NAWA(national assoc. of women artists)

Zen Buddhist meditation practice has been a major focus in my adult life. I began to sit at The Zen Studies Society in NY with Aido Shimano Roshi’s sangha when they first opened, was thankful to sit next to Soen Nakagawa Roshi during retreat and later worked for 26+ years with my teacher Charlotte Joko Beck at the Zen Center of San Diego and in Scottsdale Az. I am deeply grateful. The practice of daily observation has kept me grounded.

The art of Shukokai Karate has more recently become a movement meditation practice for me and is reflected in my artwork. Surviving breast cancer in 2010 prompted me to begin studying this karate form, earning my first black belt in 2016. Being diagnosed again with the same cancer in 2020 I was fortunate to find it was very treatable and I was able to continue training, earning my second-degree black belt in 2021, during the Covid pandemic, again with my karate instructor Shihan Mac Albus. These events coincided with losing both my mother and brother.

My spouse, Robert Christopher Dell, my 2 stepsons, Robert and Terence and our youngest son Malcolm, have all immeasurably enriched my life.

My mother was a feminist as am I. Having experienced discrimination, ignorance, and ridicule as a female, as an artist and as a female artist, nonetheless, my personal motto is “persevering and hopeful”. In 2017 I became a member of NYSWA and in 2018 was accepted into The NAWA. These are arts organizations dedicated to exhibiting women’s artwork specifically. I also serve as president of 14 Sculptors Inc., formerly a gallery in Soho and a non-profit under the umbrella of The New York Foundation for the Arts. Women artists in our society have made strides since my mother’s era and certainly in my own. For me personally, creating artwork is something that I love, a way of playing and is a process that has intrinsic value in itself. It is impossible to predict what will happen in the arts or politics, but I know that women artists have always been and will continue to be a creative force in the world. Parity in museum and gallery representation, in higher education tenured faculty positions and in meaningful opportunities (e.g. public commissions) for women artists of all ages is an on-going project that literally has centuries of bias against recognizing and mainstreaming women in the visual arts. As the title of our recent (2022) exhibition at Taller Baricua Gallery in Manhattan states, “Evolution / Revolution”