Sally Packard has lived and worked in Denton, Texas since 1999 where she is a sculptor and associate professor in the School of Visual Arts at the University of North Texas. Her sculpture and installations have been exhibited throughout the United States as well as in England, Poland, Hungary and Sweden. She was awarded the Dallas Museum Dozier Travel Grant in 1998 and the 2005 Visual Arts Grant from the Astraea Foundation located in New York City.
Referencing both the animal and the human form, her sculptures are reminiscent of something familiar but are very definitely alien. They are anthropomorphic, evocative of a cocoon or discarded hull once embodied with a creature identity. The forms allude to the topography of animate forms, dwellings, clothing and skin…..they are intentionally awkward and vulnerable, but oddly humorous. They suggest a previous identity but appear to be between genes.
Artist Statement
While the work I make manifests in a variety of visual expressions, anxiety and humor are two underlying characteristics that are continuously present. The anxiety is centered on the fallibility of the human animal while the humor inadvertently inserts itself into the sculptures, as though to save them (and me) from taking themselves too seriously. In some ways my function in the studio is both that of a fly on the wall and a bug on a pin; an observer of what is happening around me while at the same time a participant who cannot escape close scrutiny. This balance must constantly be negotiated and is an integral part of my working process. Visually, there is an animate quality to whatever I am creating which represents the determination and insistence of living beings. This animate expression often presents itself in clumsy, goofy forms and attitudes with glimmering and gaudy skins. In my recent work I have made a series of ‘animal’ sculptures that are both pitiful and funny. Where they have been and where they are going is unknown to them. I am interested in the conflicted relationship between animals and human animals. We live with them, honor them, eat them, personify them, fear them and respect them but we rarely understand them.