|  Bio
For the past 12 years, I have maintained an active (and growing) studio practice and have exhibited across the U.S. I’m originally from Warsaw, NY, and I moved to another very small town in West Virginia at age 5. Since 1998, I've been based in Chicago. Moving from a rural to an urban environment sent me spinning into cultural overload, a kind of overload that led me to develop the densely saturated and intentionally overworked qualities of my creations. Since moving to Chicago, I have tried to find myself through extensively exploring everything from painting to technology-based art. In 2005 I moved toward a more handcrafted approach with textiles, which has been the most ideal way yet for me to most effectively realize my ideas
Statement
My work redefines the possibilities of craft as a contemporary art form. I subvert the traditional decorative function of domestic needlework (primarily hand embroidery and beadwork) into a process that asks uncomfortable but vital questions about our world.
My sewing is a kind of decoration with an anti-decorative motive. I engage in laborious, time consuming projects where I obsessively embellish the surfaces of found objects, garments, and post consumer/recycled materials to reveal the alternate cultural meanings that lie within all things. Instead of beautifying, my embellishment seeks to make truths visible.
I frequently embellish the surface of a piece of clothing, making it into a garment that offers transformative possibilities for the wearer. Modifying the clothing that covers our bodies is an ideal vehicle to explore themes I often address, such as surgical body modifications, fetishization of body parts, and gender identification.
In addition to thread and traditional sewing embellishments, I often use fragments of thrift store t-shirts (those with graphics) and discarded magazines. Both are vehicles that express popular attitudes and disseminate popular culture to the masses. Taken as fragments and reordered as the surface of clothing, they become a reflection on how the disparate consumer culture of America is part of us all.
website: www.marcysperry.com
blog: http://www.thankyouforyoursubmission.com
http://www.myspace.com/marcysperry
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcysperry/
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