Baker Artist Portfolios

Fanni Somogyi is a Baltimore-based artist exploring the porous boundary between industrial and organic systems through sculptures and installations. Moving through thresholds between growth and decay, containment and leakage, structure and skin she focuses on moments when materials behave unexpectedly. Industrial processes she engages with, like electroplating and casting, take on biological qualities, and objects register transformation over time through patination. By constructing biomorphic metal sculptures, Somogyi explores metamorphosis, resilience, and interdependence, creating bodily landscapes where loss and renewal coexist, and where petals, pipes, vines, and skin converge. Recently, she became deeply engaged with electroforming, creating biomorphic copper sculptures shaped by simultaneous processes of erosion and growth. As copper migrates from anode to cathode, loss and accumulation unfold together, mirroring natural cycles found in fungi and lichen. Up close, these works resemble bodily interiors; from a distance, they read as landscapes. Boundaries begin to blur. Her desire is for the viewers to sense this merging, to feel how building, body, and terrain are not separate systems but interconnected ones, continuously reshaping each other through processes of decay, resilience, and renewal. 

Her work ranges in scale from tabletop pieces to public sculpture for Capitol Hill Arts Project (DC) and for Franconia Sculpture Park (MN). Somogyi earned an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art (MI), an MA from the Node Center (DE), and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MD). Her work has appeared in two person exhibitions with Catherine Sweeney at Macomb Community College, Beth Yashnyk at Transformer DC, and with David Szauder at Gallery Out of Home. Her work has been exhibited in nationally and internationally at Cranbrook Art Museum (MI), Fjord (PA), Vox Populi (PA), Mother-in-Law’s Gallery (NY), New Collectors (NY),  the Broom Factory (MI), Explora Salta (AR), Target Gallery (VA), Annmarie Sculpture Garden (MD), DC Arts Center (DC), Latela Curatorial (DC),  Maryland Art Place (MD). She has been a resident at Franconia Sculpture Park, Torpedo Art Factory, and Annmarie Sculpture Garden. Somogyi has been awarded two Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation Material Awards and a Research Fellowship at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Somogyi is an adjunct professor of drawing at the University of Maryland Global Campus. She has also taught numerous workshops including “Metal Fabrication” and “Bronze Casting” at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and “Kinetic Sculpture” at the Franconia Sculpture Park. Her writing practice includes poetry and art criticism. She has been an arts writer at BmoreArt Magazine.