selected press excerpts

(see bio page for complete bibliography)

"The most impressive piece in this show of artists who incorporate literary texts into their works is an 11-foot circle by Cheryl Sorg, which upon close examination turns out to be "Moby-Dick" cut and pasted into a very long spiral."

Ken Johnson, New York Times

(review of "Parsing the Line", invitational group exhibition at Work Space in NYC, Apr. 2002)

                                                        

"And there’s something profound about Cheryl Sorg’s wall sculpture.  She has taken Melvlle’s Moby Dick in its entirety, snipped it into pieces and – with the help of a mother lode of Scotch tape – arranged it into a giant spiral.  As you follow Melville’s prose from the center of the spiral outward, the words seem almost magnetic, especially when describing the inexorable call of the sea.  But riveting as it is, I had to stop reading out of sheer fatigue (Sorg’s piece is 11 feet across).  The poetry lingered, however, and I was content to just step away.  Even when you can’t follow all the words, they have a way of washing over you."

Sarah Schmerler, Time Out New York

(review of "Parsing the Line", invitational group exhibition at Work Space in NYC, Apr. 2002)

"Sorg’s installations, made with obsessive attention to detail, suggest that her great strength lies there.  While the press materials for this show describe its topics as romance and seduction, there’s much more going on, including Sorg’s interpretations of great literature.  To celebrate scenes from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, « 100 Years of Solitude », she cuts out text in the shape of origami butterflies.  The artist mounts the butterflies in a ficus tree.  She offers photos of this installation as well, but seeing the real thing is better ; she just needs to do it on a larger scale – if she can get the funding and the space.  Chances are in her favor.  Sorg is an artist to watch."

Cate McQuaid, The Boston Globe

("Beauty gets a makeover in ‘Allure’" - review of "Allure", solo exhibition at the Copley Society of Art in Boston, Feb. 2001)

"I admire the attention to detail and craft in her work. But I also love the parallels between her work and the writer's life.  Writers spend hours and hours alone, laboring over every word in their novels, then Sorg takes that end product and spends hours and hours alone in her studio, working with their text to create something completely different. I love the story of the process as much as the work itself."

Angela Carone, Arts Producer, KPBS

("Artist and Book Lover Cheryl Sorg Destroys Books to Make Art", review of "text • context", solo show at the Encinitas Library, on her Culture Lust blog on kpbs.org, Mar. 2009)

"During a studio visit, Sorg showed me Moby Dick, an 11-foot-diameter piece that is carefully crafted from a copy of the novel from which the sentences have been cut and then sequentially taped back together in a giant spiraling circle.  The color of the text and paper creates a hypnotic visual rhythm that is esthetically powerful."

Sara Dassel, Art New England

("Making a Life Out of Making Art :  Three emerging photographers strive for the elusive balance between art and everything else", July 2002)

"Cheryl Sorg’s Transformations also relates poetry and spirituality :  the artist cut and reassembled two copies of Anne Sexton’s book of the same name into a long, single line of text, which she then draped and looped around the rising limbs of a paper bark maple, underling the relationship between the tree and the poet’s material, paper, while also literally intertwining the lines of text with the body of the maple."

Louise Kennedy, The Boston Globe

("Enchanted Forest :  Exhibit connects with nature’s spirit at Jamaica Plain cemetery. "  feature on "Spirits in the Trees" at the Forest Hills Trust / Forest Hills Cemetery, Boston 2002)