Ginny Sykes maintains a studio practice as well as develops public art projects informed by a commitment to local community activism. She has participated in both solo and group exhibitions, including Transcultural Exchange’s The Coaster Project, an international collaborative show in one hundred locations in 2002, and Daughters, a regional traveling exhibition with the Midwest Chapter of the Women’s Caucus of Art.

Initiating projects within her community, her collaborations with the Chicago Department of Transportation and the Chicago Public Art Group have resulted in significant architectural and spatial interventions such as the 1996 mosaic sculpture From Many Paths We Come at Sunnyside Mall, co-led with Mirtes Zwierzynski, and Over The Rainbow at Stockton School, twelve exterior panels produced with Corinne Peterson. A 1999 Illinois Percent for Art Award led to Rora, a glass mosaic on the Chicago River that won an Honor Award from The American Society of Landscape Architects.

A respected educator, Ms. Sykes has taught in both the Museum and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as through Gallery 37, the Illinois Arts Council, and Beacon Street Gallery residency arts programs. Her expertise ranges from traditional European painting techniques to contemporary and conceptual studio practice.

Ms. Sykes is an active member of Chicago Public Art Group and an advisory board member of Woman Made Gallery. Her work is included in the publications A Guide to Chicago Murals and Urban Art Chicago.

Ginny Sykes Artist Statement

My artwork moves freely between abstract and representational concerns, whether in studio art or in public collaborative projects. Growing up in Washington DC during the tumultuous 1970’s, I was aware of the potential for polarity in the public discourse. My work plays with ambiguity as a site of meaning, where questions can be posed and what is clear has embedded within it the constancy of change. I use multiple images of the same object or forms in a work to support this idea. This is partly a form of resistance to dogmatic ideas that result in oversimplified and distorted cultural dominance that avoids looking at truth and darkness. I am interested in exposing the hidden to reveal the intensity of the life force within. My study of and participation in feminism and social activism has contributed to my consciousness of the necessity of multiplicities of meaning and ways of making.

My preferred painting medium is oil, using a mixture of thick heavy impasto and transparent veils of color to create imagery that is overlapping and layered. I am interested in baroque ideas of movement and form and the tension between the classical and the anticlassical. I favor richly saturated, nuanced color and enjoy bending a shallow space with shifting planes, evoking the possibility of many spaces in one area. Meaning is conveyed through both the forms and the execution’s tactile and visual properties. It is my desire that the narrative content converge with its manner or style.

Collaboration is at the heart of what I do as a public artist, specifically the inclusion of ideas of the people for and with whom the art is being created. My approach taps into the idea of art as a site of play and interactivity, in the way a child experiences the world. I prefer to evoke rather than describe, so that viewers engage with the work in an arena of discovery. My greatest joy in public art making is the synergy I experience working with children, and how when given a framework that is structured, yet open, children will astound me with their ideas and show me new ways of thinking.

In the 1996 sculptural mosaic From Many Paths We Come, produced in collaboration with Mirtes Zwierzynski and a neighborhood youth team, the reality of immigration is given spatial and physical form, through a path containing symbols of the diverse cultural backgrounds of the participants. The juxtaposition of the path with three columns suggests a journey leading to emergence. Current residents utilize the space as a play site for children, and a reminder of Uptown’s historical significance as a port of entry into Chicago. In Over the Rainbow (1999-2001), produced with Corinne Peterson and Stockton Elementary School, themes of past, present and future decorate two sides of the building, presenting both history and aspiration to the public, reflecting values of the school community in the committed participation of the three-year project.

RORA, 1999, glass tile mosaic, by Ginny Sykes


Over the Rainbow, 2001, clay relief and ceramic tile, by Ginny Sykes and Corinne Peterson


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