Cheryl Wassenaar

Cheryl Wassenaar is an Associate Professor of Art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. She holds a BFA from Calvin College and an MFA from the University of Cincinnati. Her practice merges visual art with text, repurposing found commercial signage into site-specific installations that explore communication, bureaucracy, and modernist aesthetics. Notable collaborations include 'The Cabinet of Ordinary Affairs' with poet Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer, funded by the 2018 Artistic Innovations Grant. She teaches foundational design, color theory, and methodology.

Her exhibitions include 'Doomscapes and the Digital Beyond' (2024), 'Architecture of Form' (2024), and 'Wayfinding II' (2022). Corporate commissions include works for Camden Real Estate, Fidelity Investments, and the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art. Wassenaar’s research emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches, merging poetry, sculpture, and sound to interrogate societal systems.

• Awards: 2016 ArtPrize Calvin Alumni Award
• Publications: Co-authored chapter in At Length (2019), contribution to MIT Press (2024)
• Labs/Teams: Collaborates with poets and multimedia artists on immersive installations