VIRGINIA SPERRY

About the Artist

Virginia Sperry grew up in a house full of art, music, dance and theater. A bachelor’s degree in theater, a year dancing at the Martha Graham School in NYC and a master’s degree in dance therapy preceded Virginia’s visual arts career. Her first foray into sculpture started with polymer clay in 1990. In 2003 Virginia learned to weld in a metal fabrication class at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Virginia began to create amazingly life-like steel animals. Her public installations can be seen across the country. After attending a bio-art residency at the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2015, Virginia began to work on site-specific installations made form yarn, paper, wood and steel. These installations were an expression of her new and renewed knowledge about the realities of racism and what it means to be white in America. Virginia lives and works on a six-acre farm outside of Baltimore, MD with her husband, one big dog and two grumpy old cats. Many of her larger sculptures are scattered around her property, which is open to the community for public viewing by appointment.

Artist's Statement

I am passionate about exploring different materials. I learn ways to manipulate, build and push the limits of a medium. My artistic pathway has been unorthodox, playing with polymer clay led to welding steel sculptures which shared my attention with photographing rust. Now fiber installations and paper sculptures take up most of my creative attention. However, I will use whatever material is needed to best express my ideas and emotions. I have spent the last four years encountering new and renewed knowledge about the realities of racism and what it means to be white in America. With my recent body of work I am looking beyond my initial feelings of guilt and shame in order to come to terms with my role in the ongoing inequities that are rooted in the founding of this country. My goal is for my work to promote a thoughtful dialogue about these issues that will lead to sustained positive change. I am aware that as a white woman, I walk a fine line in talking about race. There are not a lot of examples to follow. But I feel strongly that any dialogue about the subject is better than no dialogue.