Devorah Sperber Studio
917-359-9382
devorahsperber@me.com
480 Gate 5 Road, #126, Sausalito, CA 94965

Biography

Interested in the links between art, science, and technology through the ages, former New York artist, Devorah Sperber deconstructs familiar images to address the way the brain processes visual information versus the way we think we see. “As a visual artist,” she says, “I cannot think of a topic more stimulating and yet so basic than the act of seeing—how the human brain makes sense of the visual world.”

Born in 1961 in Detroit, MI, Sperber graduated from the Art Institute of Colorado in 1981 and Regis University in 1987 (summa cum laude).  She lived in New York City from 1989- 2011 and had studios in Manhattan and Woodstock, NY.   In 2011 she moved to  Boulder, CO and in 2014 she moved to Marin County, CA where she currently resides.  

Since 1999, Sperber has created a series of large-scale installations and multi-part works, which utilize pixilated, photo-based representation in formats that fluctuate between representation and abstraction. In 2002 she was invited to create a site-specific installation at the Montclair Art Museum. The resulting installation, based on Edward Hopper’s Coast Guard Station, 1927, was the catalyst for a series of artwork based on other artworks. Though it initiated the new series, the realization of the Montclair commission gestated for two years during which she created works based on paintings by Jackson Pollock, Chuck Close, Jan Vermeer, Hans Holbein, Salvador Dali, and Leonardo da Vinci.  In 2005, Sperber represented the Brooklyn Museum and the United States at the Ljubljana Print Biennale, for which she created new thread-spool works based on Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper and Mona Lisa.  A solo exhibition featuring these works was on display the Brooklyn Museum from January 26 to June 17, 2007.  

Using ordinary spools of thread, Sperber creates pixilated, inverted images of masterpieces, which appear as colorful abstractions to the naked eye. When viewed with optical devices, however, the works becomes immediately recognizable as the famous paintings. The thread spools works are hung upside down in reference to the fact that the lens of the eye projects an inverted image of the world onto the retina, which is corrected by the brain. A clear acrylic sphere, positioned in front of each work, functions like the human eye and brain, not only inverting but also focusing the image so that it appears as a sharp, faithful, right-side-up reproduction of the famous painting.  

Ms. Sperber’s 2007 solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum  “The Eye of the Artist: The Work of Devorah Sperber” included full scale re-creations of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper (29 feet wide) and Mona Lisa (30 x 21 inches). The concept was based on the technology of print making and how mechanical reproductions alter images and the scale of artworks as they exist in “the mind’s eye”. She selected The Last Supper and Mona Lisa because they are two of the most recognizable and reproduced images in the history of art.

An expanded version of Ms. Sperber’s solo exhibition” “Threads of Perception” traveled to Mass MOCA (MA), Boise Art Museum (ID), Knoxville Museum of Art (TN), and the Kimball Art Center (UT).

In 2023 Sperber began working on a new series of art that bridges the universal languages of music, math, and color.  

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Art that Bridges the Universal Languages of Music, Math, and Color

In the time of the Ancient Greeks, music was not seen as an art but rather as a quantitative science that was used as a mathematical and philosophical description of how the universe was perceived to be constructed.