SHERRY's profile
Sherry Insley is a Baltimore-based artist working primarily in photography and alternative light-sensitive processes. Her ongoing project Ghost Forest documents the visible effects of climate change along the Mid-Atlantic Coast. As rising sea levels and storm surges push saltwater into freshwater ecosystems, soil salinity increases, causing the Atlantic White Cedar—highly sensitive to salt—to be the first species to die. Their skeletal white trunks standing within lush landscapes serve as a stark warning of a changing climate.
Deeply interested in the physical nature of photography, Insley also explores alternative processes involving light and sound. Her Reverberate series consists of Watergrams—camera-less, film-free images created in the darkroom using light-sensitive materials. Several works in this series incorporate sound created in collaboration with musician Mitch Maltese, expanding photography into a multisensory experience.
Insley’s most recent body of work, Vanitas, draws from allegorical Dutch still-life paintings to examine mortality, impermanence, and the vanity of earthly pleasures. Informed by a life-altering cancer diagnosis in the summer of 2025, this ongoing series reflects the realities of chronic illness. As medical appointments, procedures, and treatments disrupted her studio practice, Insley adapted by producing smaller-scale works at home. Traditional Vanitas symbolism is reimagined through the inclusion of personal objects such as acupuncture needles, medication, scar wrap, and surgical drain rings, connecting historical metaphor with her current experience.
Insley is a working artist and art educator. She is the 2025 Fay Karfgin Lecturer and Visiting Artist at the Katz Gallery, Friends School, and the recipient of the Municipal Arts Society of Baltimore City’s 2024 Artist Travel Prize. Recent solo exhibitions include Ghost Forest (Rehoboth Art League), Ephemera (Katz Gallery), What Remains (Cotyledon Arts), and Temporality (Gallery Blue Door). She is a full-time Visual Arts Instructor at the Carver Center for the Arts, a nationally recognized audition-based public high school.
