In my latest series of mixed media works, Menstrala Romanticized, my Menstrala are re-represented within my photographs.
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Miniarcs appeared on Deutsche Welle TV / DW-TV. Deutsche Welle is Germany’s international boradcaster online, on-screen, and over the air that reaches nearly 90 million listeners and viewers worldwide every week.-
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Radio interview with Vanessa Tiegs.
Listen to Part 1 of 2 (9 mins)
Listen to Part 2 of 2 (7 mins)
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Dave Navarro and Vanessa Tiegs. Scenes from Deeper with Dave Navarro.
ReadyMade Magazine’s Movers & Makers, The Small Spaces Issue features Vanessa Tiegs with one of her original Miniarcs, a modern glass top table created in miniature.
“Much of the magic of Tiegs’s creations is in the way she captures them on film. Taking a view from a San Francisco high-rise as the backdrop for her imaginary luxury homes, she angles the lens and manipulates the scale so that the 853-foot Transamerica Pyramid building, for example, looks perfectly in sync with a 10-inch bed in the foreground.”
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Having begun her creative life dancing ballet at the early age of five, artist Vanessa Tiegs has brought her movement, sharp eye, and creative intensity to dance, painting, design and photography. A former professional ballet dancer who trained at American Ballet Theatre School, she danced under the artistic direction of Rudolf Nureyev in his staged productions of “Don Quixote” and “Manfred” with the Zurich Opera Ballet. During Vanessa’s ballet career she performed on the Metropolitan Opera House stage with Gelsey Kirkland, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Cynthia Gregory and Fernando Bujones. Her teachers and coaches included Hector Zaraspe (the coach of Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev), Natalia Makarova, Ivan Nagy, Robert Joffery & David Howard.
From there, Vanessa went on to Smith College and graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Cum Laude. During that time she found a new creative love in design, model making, & architecture, contributing to such firms as Skidmore Owings & Merrill and Robert A.M. Stern Architects in New York. Pictured at the right is the first professional model she built while she interned at Robert Stern’s architectural firm as a model builder.
For Vanessa, one of her biggest inspirations in life came while living in Amsterdam after she discovered poet Judy Grahn’s beautiful book, Blood, Bread & Roses: How Menstruation Created the World. Grahn’s writings would change her life and the way she looked at womanhood and the world. Grahn’s inspirational book inspired Vanessa to travel to Neolithic archaeological sites in Europe and to create a workshop, which she taught to more than 200 women across the globe — from Holland, the UK, Malta, Greece, and the US. In addition, she was published in several international publications.
But nothing would prepare her for something so unorthodox and taboo and rewarding as painting with blood; her own menstrual blood.
When Vanessa began this artistic journey, she was earning her Master’s Degree in Women’s Spirituality. Her Master’s Thesis, Spiraling Moon: A System for Menstrual Insight, was a qualitative study of women’s responses to their cycles in relation to their personal, social and physical conditions. Over the course of three years, Vanessa painted 88 paintings, or Menstrala, as she calls them. All 88 paintings tell the story of the monthly renewal process in the form of a visual journal. Each work is visually captivating, lyrical, mysterious, and awe-inspiring — a beautiful and bold, yet delicate, tapestry that embraces the wonder of womanhood.
Whether designing, photographing, painting, or collaborating with other talented artists, today, Vanessa sees no limits in her artistic endeavors. She is sought out by those who are and want to be inspired.
