Scheherazade O Goertzel

Sculptor, Filmmaker, Designer, and Geographer.

Born in New Jersey and raised primarily in the DC metropolitan area, Scheherazade Goertzel has always had a fascination with art and developed a particular fascination with clay sculpture by the age of five. She has always enjoyed the ability to mold ideas and perceptions into reality, and has always been inspired by the art around her, such as from her mother, an oil painter (aranya.org) focused on depictions of nature and abstract lifeforms. Whenever it was available to her in school, she would attend art and sculpture classes, and her primary activities outside of school also often pertained to art.

Ms. Goertzel has always also had a passion for travel and exploring other cultures. At 15, she studied abroad in Osaka, Japan for her junior year of high school, and at 16 she attended Bard College at Simon’s Rock where she attended multiple ceramics and videography courses. For her junior year of college she studied abroad in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and in her senior year wrote a bachelor’s thesis on the ecological impact of church forests in Ethiopia to support her degree in Critical Geography.

Following her degree, she moved back to Ethiopia where she could do freelance work online while building her art portfolio. She then moved back to the US, moving between many states over the course of a couple years. She took up art freelancing and spent the rest of her time exploring the study of ecology and geology on her own.

During this period and throughout her entire life, she has been an avid traveler, and has had the opportunity to visit many different landscapes around the world, meditating upon, sketching, sculpting, and painting her impressions of the world and its many plant, human, animal, ethereal, and other inhabitants. Spirituality is a major part of her artwork; the interconnection of all life, and the experience of what it is to live as an individual entity. In recent years she has developed an increased interest in representing the interconnectedness of all things, and has aimed to focus on improving her painting skills so as to add more to her sculptures with the intricacies of their painted surfaces.