Artist Statement
Drawing from abstraction, floral iconography, and urban visual language, my work celebrates resilience, memory, and transformation. Through a synthesis of graffiti, calligraphy, and layered textures, I create vivid compositions that echo emotional depth and material experimentation.
The series Furious Flowers serves as a visual ode to the overlooked contributions of women—particularly African-American women—transforming florals into vessels of remembrance and woven histories. Through symbolic layering and cultural iconography, these works evoke a kind of material memory, where surface becomes archive and each gesture channels ancestral strength and lived experience.
In Soft in the Fire and Breathe Flowers, material becomes metaphor. Using recycled silk, cardboard, and glass beads, these works explore sustainability as regeneration. The tactile richness of these elements creates immersive surfaces that speak to renewal, ancestral reverence, and the artistry inherent in reclamation.
Across each series, I seek to create a layered experience—inviting viewers to move between rhythm and stillness, gesture and meaning, surface and depth. My practice honors both the individual and the communal, aiming to evolve the transient into permanence through process-driven transformation. Each composition becomes part of an ongoing exploration of rebirth—a tactile remembrance shaped by material memory and cultural continuity.
Bio
Cheryl is native of Detroit, Michigan. She currently lives and works in New York City. Cheryl is a graduate of The University of Michigan (BGS), New York University (MPS), and The Parsons School of Design (AAS). She has also studied with abstract landscape painter Brian Rutenberg. Cheryl’s work has been shown in throughout the eastern United States