VANESSA TIEGS
Artist | Ballet Coach | Dance Photographer | Architectural Designer & Model Builder | Inventor
To See The Sea
as A Tree of Life
Classical Ballerina & Pianist
Vanessa began her artistic career at 15, performing on The Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. & The Auditorium in Chicago with The Zurich Ballet under the artistic direction of Rudolf Nureyev. She trained on full merit scholarship at The American Ballet Theatre School in NYC starting at age 10.
During her Smith College years, she studied architecture, historic preservation, urban planning, music theory & piano performance.
International Photographer
Also at age 10, her father showed her how to develop negatives in his dark room. In 2010, she used the Digital SLR Canon EOS 7D to photograph one subject for over 365 consecutive days to create her published photography book.
Getty Images, Avanti Press, and another small press in the U.K. license her photographs internationally.
Vivi's Ballerina Dream
Her photo series, “Vivi's Ballerina Dream" (2010) became the campaign posters for Dancers Love Dogs in 2012, a not-for-profit organization in South Africa.
While visiting Ms. Kirkland in her dressing room after her performance, the famous ballerina gifted her pointe shoes to Vanessa. Kirkland's magical gift keeps on giving: Dancers Love Dogs has assisted over 26,000 homeless dogs in Cape Town, Durban & Johannesburg since 2012.
In the series, Vanessa flaunts the historical pointe shoes that Gelsey Kirkland wore in her 1976 American Ballet Theatre performance of "La Sylphide" at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, New York.
Dance Photographer
Vanessa also photographed the dancers she coached. One student joined the Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet in New York and another joined the Kirov Ballet Academy in D.C.
Using A.I. in 2024, Vanessa produced Venus Geist Portraits deriving from selfies. She also has practiced calligraphy, painting & model building (learning as a summer intern at Robert A.M. Stern Architects & Skidmore Owings & Merrill in NYC during the 1980s), which evolved into Miniarcs: designing, building & photographing miniature modern interiors. From 2005-2010, she was Senior Executive Assistant in Booz Allen Hamilton's San Francisco office and has also assisted corporate work teams in international companies, such as Sony Europe in Amsterdam and Deutsche Bank in NYC. Her favorite life-time field of study is Karmic Astrology, taught by her mentor, Zsuzsanna Griga, from Budapest Hungary.
Throughout the 1990's, Vanessa traveled to archaeological sites across the countries of Old Europe including Prague, Malta, Sardinia & the Greek Islands Santorini & Crete, which first inspired her studies in Hellenistic Astrology. Upon returning to the States in 2000, she began learning Evolutionary Astrology. By 2012, she met Zsuzsanna Griga, Transcendental Karmic Astrologer who revealed two distinctive astrological patterns characterizing Vanessa's horoscope: a Trawler & a "Finger of God" Yod to Saturn.
The artist has also invented a user-friendly navigation tool for astrologers of all learning levels: a clock that tells cycle logical time.
Sedna: The Artist’s North Star (Karmically Chosen Destiny)
From the Fingers of Sedna
Taking 11,400 years to cycle with the Sun, the coldest, most distant trans-Neptunian object in our solar system was named Sedna to honor the Inuit Goddess who is thought to live at the bottom of the frigid Arctic Ocean.
Betrayed by her husband and her father, who cut off all her fingers to save his own life when his boat capsized, Sedna sinks to the bottom of the sea. From her finger stumps, Sedna creates a bounty of sea creatures to provide the Inuit with food. And so, Sedna became the immortal sea goddess they celebrate each year.
This goddess archetype symbolizes creation from betrayal & dissection. Sedna affirms that if we delve into the darkest, coldest, loneliest place we fear most, we will return enriched, as we are worthy of love & respect and have every right to expect that others treat us well despite our shortcomings.
Float a message to the artist if you wish to share anything or would like a Karmic reading of your star dome's archetypal electromagnetism.
© Copyright 2000-2025 Vanessa Tiegs. All rights reserved.
To reproduce photographs on this website a license must be obtained from Vanessa Tiegs. All A.I. generated derivatives require royalty fees.
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