Like the alchemist turning base metals into gold, Ann Sperry magically transforms the discards and debris of technology in to imaginative constructs that fascinate and transprot. Sperry begins with the fragmentary and ruinous relics of engineering, manufacture, and use which she recombines and fabricates into a new realm for us through her visionary and ingenious creative power. For us, her viewers, she redefines space, at times seeming to hurl us into distant galaxies, or again inviting a more intimate awareness of our own interior lives. After a recent foray into the celestial with her series Out There, she has returned home and looked inward with this latest series of works, which she calls Where Is Your Heart....

For the viewer, Sperry's sculptures are both abstract and yet evocative, metaphoric. She has produced this latest series, Where Is Your Heart, at a time when public concern is focusing on medical advances, genetic discoveries, the debate over health care, and teh aging process. John Glenn's second voyage into orbit aroun the earth at the age of seventy-seven brought together themes from two of the realms evoked by Sperry's work: the structures of outer and inner space.

Both the mystery of such an outward journey and its unknown effects on the body are suggested by the pieces in Where Is Your Heart. Biomorphic loops that allude to inner workings are forged from mysterious tubes, metal mesh, glass and gears. Sperry's sculptures in this series often imply connections between disparate parts. Occasionally, too, she creates an eerie effect with what appears to be a bursting form, disconnected, and unsettling. Ah, we have to remind ourselves. It's only art.

— Gail Levin © 1999