RESUME

Deborah Wing-Sproul is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in photography, video and performance. Her performances (or "performative acts") permeate the genres of sculpture/installation, drawing, photography and printmaking. Beginning in the mid '70's she studied modern dance and later went on to choreograph. She studied under Merce Cunningham and others, including Douglas Dunn, Dan Wagoner, Viola Farber Company members, and June Finch. Wing-Sproul also studied with voice/movement composer/performer Meredith Monk and reperformed multiple works for Marina Abramović's retrospective, The Artist Is Present, MoMA, NYC, 2010.

             Over the years Wing-Sproul's work has been selected by a diverse group of curators including: Jeremy Strick (MOCA, LA); Judy Collischan (while Curator for the Neuberger Museum); Patricia Phillips, independent Writer and Dean of Graduate Studies at RISD; Bruce Brown (both as an independent Curator and while Curator of the Center for Maine Contemporary Art); and Bill Arning (Director, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston). In 2007 Bill Arning, while Curator at the List Visual Arts Center at MIT, awarded a solo exhibition to Wing-Sproul at the Housatonic Museum of Art, (November 5-December 18, 2009). Mass MoCA Curator Denise Markonish selected Wing-Sproul's video, Tidal Culture: Part II (Newfoundland) to receive first prize in the 2009 exhibition, H2O: Film on Water. In 2010 the artist was nominated for a Smithsonian Artist Residency Fellowship and she is the recipient of the 2011 Individual Artist Fellowship in Media/Performing Arts from the Maine Arts Commission. In 2022 Wing-Sproul was invited to be an artist in residence at Speedwell Projects, Portland ME. 

             Deborah's work has exhibited in numerous venues including the WPA/C Corcoron Gallery, Washington D.C.; Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY; Arts + Literature Laboratory, New Haven, CT; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Massachusetts; Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport; and Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs, Queens, NY.  In 2008 she was invited to create work for an outdoor site-specific exhibition based in Taiwan. Her current long-term itinerant, performance-based work, Tidal Culture (2004-) has taken her to the North Atlantic shorelines of Maine, Newfoundland, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and the Outer Hebrides. The first volume of Tidal Culture will continue onto, and conclude in, Ireland.

            Wing-Sproul holds an MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz. She has also studied at the School of Visual Arts, NYC; Film/Video Arts, NYC; and the International Film + Television Workshops, Rockport, ME. Deborah has taught in several disciplines, including: Design and Fabrication, Parson's School of Design; Printmaking, SUNY New Paltz; Sculpture Studio, Sculpture Seminar, Printmaking (BFA) and Non-Resident Studio Advisor (MFA), Maine College of Art; and Performance Art, MFA Intermedia and New Media, University of Maine, Orono.