Ginny Sykes uses symbol and myth to explore archetypal narratives of women’s lives. She believes in the arts transforming potential to heal the splits within maker, audience, and community. Sykes has been in over 100 exhibitions, including solo shows in 2016 at Castel dell’Ovo in Naples, Italy, and Woodson Regional Library in Chicago in 2020. She has produced over 20 performance and video works and been included in international performance festivals, such as Water Tower Arts Festival, and Naples Performing Festival. She has created more than 40 public art projects, notably On the Wings of Water, a 40,000 piece ceramic and mosaic mural at O’Hare Airport, and Rora, located on the Chicago River, for which she received an Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects.
Sykes taught art for 25 years in artist in residency programs, and for 10 years at the School of the Art Institute and was a core artist with Chicago Public Art Group for 24 years. She was a speaker in 2018 at the College Art Association Conference and at the International Jung Conference Art and Psyche. Sykes has a BFA in painting from Washington University, studied classical painting and art history at the Studio Cecil Graves in Florence Italy, and has her MA from Loyola University in Women’s and Gender Studies with a focus on performance art, for which she received a Community and Global Stewards Fellowship.
