Jason Seley

Jason L. Seley was an American sculptor, educator, and academic administrator. He was an early teacher at the Centre d'Art in Haiti in the 1940s, and served as the dean of the Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning in the 1980s. Seley was known for his eccentric figurative sculptures.

Early life and education

Jason Seley was born in Newark, New Jersey, to parents Leah and Simon M. Seley. In 1942, Seley married Clara Kalnitsky, a former model from Kiev, turned sculptor. He graduated in 1936 from Weequahic High School.
He received his BA degree in sculpture at Cornell University in 1940; and in 1943 for two years he studied at the Art Students League of New York, under Ossip Zadkine.

While in school, Albert Mangonès was his roommate at Cornell, and convinced Seley to teach in Haiti. Seley and his wife moved to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in January 1946, where Seley would teach under a United States government grant and have three solo exhibitions at the Centre d'Art, along with several commissions. In 1949, Seley was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study art in Paris.
Seley worked as a professor at Hofstra University from 1953 to 1965.; followed by working as a professor at Cornell University starting in 1966, becoming chair of the department of art and dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning.
His preferred material for his abstract sculptures was chrome-plated steel, usually from automobile bumpers. In 1969, Seley returned to representational work with Colleoni II, a replica of Andrea del Verrocchio's famous equestrian statue, in which he created using nothing but car-bumpers. Colleoni II is part of the Empire State Plaza Art Collection and is located in the Corning Tower Plaza Level in the Empire State Plaza.
He died at age 64 of an illness on June 23, 1983, at Tompkins Community Hospital in Ithaca.