Jason Seley

Jason L. Seley (May 20, 1919 – June 23, 1983) 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 (née Kridel) 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. 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 (in 1946, 1948, and 1949), along with several commissions. 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.

He died at age 64 of an illness on June 23, 1983, at Tompkins Community Hospital (now Cayuga Medical Center) in Ithaca.