Biography
Charmaine Spencer has established her quiet claim as one of Cleveland’s foremost artists, distinguishing herself winning major awards throughout her tenure at the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA) graduating in 2005. While attending CIA she was recipient of the William McVey Award for Excellence in Sculpture, curated her first professional solo exhibition, Rising/Bound, at Groop Gallery and was one of two students selected to finish posthumously, the last sculpture of The Sculpture Center’s founder, David E. Davis.
Among Spencer’s honors is the 2009 Creative Workforce Fellowship, the 2010 Ingenuity Project Award, a 2020 and 2022 Ohio Arts Council Grant. She was awarded a 2022 FRONT Art Futures Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited at the Artist Archives of the Western Reserve, Cleveland State University Gallery, Spaces, the Cleveland Botanical Garden, The Sculpture Center, the Transformer Station, the Maltz Museum and the Akron Art Museum. Spencer’s works were recently acquired by CWRU and are on permanent exhibition in the Putnam Collection as well as a site-pacific two-story installation in the Hilton Collection Downtown Cleveland.
In her most recent honor she was invited and commissioned by the "Art Institute of Chicago," to create a major sculpture for the museum's largest and most ambitious international exhibit to date, Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica. Charmaine’s work will travel from Chicago to Barcelona, and on to Brussels where the exhibition will conclude in 2026.
Geoff Baker, Still Point Gallery
Statement
My artistic career and creative work, research, and philosophy have evolved molding my aesthetic sensibilities with social issues and cultural heritage. Of particular focus has been investigating how African American culture has progressed and evolved through time and place. Moreover, how African culture is valued, maintained and translated in to a First World's contemporary society. How social conditioning defines concepts of value, our sense of place and how it shapes our individual development are all conceptual subjects that define my work.
The physical forms favor natural castoffs, like driftwood, grass, or soil, with utilitarian materials, like wall lath, burlap or steel nails, constructed through traditional and contemporary methods. Many of my works are designed to visually contrast the valued or “prized” versus the “discarded”, while at the same time distinguishing its place. The totality of my work represents the struggles and growth as we reconstruct our self-worth and social place. The materials are chosen deliberately to symbolize our identity being stripped, cut or broken, then rewoven, bound or slotted back together as its new "self" is formed, reconstructing and redefining value in the process. These works create bold sculptures built to adapt to changing environments, even if the environment includes the ethereal inner-self, the shadow and light of our existence.
Charmaine Spencer, Artist