Cheryl Wassenaar

Cheryl Wassenaar is a visual artist who explores the function of text in a hybrid practice of painting, sculpture, and design. She works primarily with found and fabricated commercial signage, repurposing the discarded wood into visual metaphors of communication that borrow from the language of modernist painting and contemporary advertising. The work evokes visual stutters of sounds, ideas, and data. Wassenaar also uses sign maker’s vinyl and manipulated objects for site-specific installations, often collaborating with a writer or poet.

Wassenaar received her BFA from Calvin College and her MFA from the University of Cincinnati. Her work is exhibited nationally and internationally, appearing in over sixty group and solo exhibitions. Her corporate collections include Camden Real Estate headquarters in Houston; Fidelity Investments in Boston; and Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, MI. She was recently awarded an Artistic Innovations grant by the Mid America Arts Alliance. She is currently Associate Professor in the College of Art at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Washington University in St Louis, Missouri.

Past Work