Biography
Tamsie Ringler studied Art at the University of Wisconsin and received her MFA in Sculpture from the University of Texas at Austin. She lives and works in Dubuque, Iowa, and is currently establishing a community foundry collective. Her work can be found at the Pedvale Open-Air Art Museum in Latvia, the National Sculpture Factory in Cork, Ireland, and at sculpture parks in the United States. She has received numerous awards including a McKnight Fellowship in 2017. In 2021, she organized Winter is Alive! a cooler world carnival, which presented an outdoor sculpture exhibition and online forum on the climate crisis in Madison, Wisconsin. Currently she is directing Dubuque Rendezvous! a cooler world gathering, which will be a cultural platform and climate forum in Dubuque, Iowa in June 2026 on the Mississippi River. Dubuque Rendezvous!
Our life is the mold that forms us. All of our experience leaves its mark on our pattern—we are the expression of this impression. Compassion is the material we are formed of, it is the foundation of our humanity, creating our ability to experience and empathize with others. As the mold prints to the pattern, empathizing with every ridge and well, the casting forms a collaboration between cause and effect, idea and form, material and process, a collective reflection of experience. The pattern is inspired by the mind, the casting is inspired by the mold, the formation and transformation of matter is inspired by the material of dreams.