press

 

selected press excerpts

(see cv page for complete bibliography)



Um, yes… this is my kind of graffiti! Wait, can I call it that? Street art? Tagging with tape? I don’t know what to call it other than GORGEOUS! I have been carefully stalking, I mean watching, the evolution of California based artist Cheryl Sorg for awhile {hence most of these photos coming from her Instagram feed}. I’ve seen her working on these beautiful, colorful designs made from carefully cut metallic tape, and then just the other day… gasp! There they were on forgotten corners, concrete columns, skateparks, and under bridges. And I repeat… gasp!

The Jealous Curator, 2016



“Directly underneath [Long-Bin Chen’s Punishment #1] is a leviathan, Cheryl Sorg’s altered book, comprising two copies of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Sorg has painstakingly excised and extricated each word of the tome. She has tediously taped the confetti end-to-end starting from the first three words, “Call me Ishmael,” creating a massive vortex. Each ensuing word of the entirety of this encyclopedic, mythic classic can be read in an ever-expanding dizzying concentric spiral. This leaves the viewer to wonder about the work’s title, which seems particularly apt, Surely All This Is Not without Meaning

(Odd and Unbound:  Altered Books - review of Odd Volumes:  Book Art from the Allan Chasanoff Collection by Andres Azucena  Verzosa in Art New England Online)



"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)

A review on Art New England Online of the Odd Volumes:  Book Art from the Allan Chasanoff Collection show!


Here’s the bit about my Moby Dick piece, “Surely all this is not without meaning...”:


“Directly underneath [Long-Bin Chen’s Punishment #1] is a leviathan, Cheryl Sorg’s altered book, comprising two copies of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Sorg has painstakingly excised and extricated each word of the tome. She has tediously taped the confetti end-to-end starting from the first three words, “Call me Ishmael,” creating a massive vortex. Each ensuing word of the entirety of this encyclopedic, mythic classic can be read in an ever-expanding dizzying concentric spiral. This leaves the viewer to wonder about the work’s title, which seems particularly apt, Surely All This Is Not without Meaning.

Click here for my feature on the Indiewalls Studio Series blog!