Shelley Spector is an artist, curator and teacher. She has been sculpting for more than 20 years, carving and assembling quirky and colorful sculptures that evoke a joyous sense of play while exploring identity, memory, perception, and language. Spector’s sculptures merge the sensibilities, techniques, and strengths of fine art, folk art, and craft, marrying humor with pathos. Spector’s art is often figurative in form, human in content, and always personable: warm, spirited, and engaging. In recent exhibitions she set a new trajectory for her work by realizing a long-held goal: to create all-encompassing "total environments" of sight, sound, motion, and meaning in which the viewer is a participant rather than spectator.

Her deli-man father and dance-teacher mother imparted to Spector a love of music, dance, community, and conviviality—all the pleasures of sense and sensibility. Born and raised in Northeast Philadelphia and a graduate of the city’s University of the Arts, Spector remains, at heart, a Philly homegirl—one with a view to the world and a gift for engaging universal themes with wit, warmth, and a delight in humanity. Her sculptures are part of many private and public collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art, Federal Reserve Bank in Philadelphia, HBO in New York, Human Rights Campaign in Washington, and the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art. She is a recipient of grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Independence Foundation.

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