Unpacking a 30-year journey, Stephen and Sibylle discuss how their Residencies at WheatonArts impacted their work and careers. They reflect on their collaborations as an artist couple through an intimate conversation and discuss their recent works as solo artists.

This event is part of “Wheaton Conversations,” a new virtual series highlighting select artists with ties to WheatonArts! To see the full schedule of conversations, Click Here. Thank you to our sponsors, PNC Arts Alive! and the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass.

Stephen Paul Day, an avid seeker of the curious and wonderful, lives in New Orleans and works part-time in Berlin, Germany. He derives pleasure from the unusual and is deeply motivated by experimenting with history. His main studies began at the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts, where he studied lithography and painting from 1979 to 1983. He had his first solo show in New Orleans at the alternative Bienville Gallery in 1985. Since that time, he has actively shown his work in his home city and is an artist with the Arthur Roger Gallery. In 1986 he received the first of many artist residencies in New York at the experimental glass workshop. He learned the odd craft of neon. Stephen stayed in New York City for six years. During this time, he was awarded a grant to study with Laurie Anderson at the Banff Art Center, worked with Dennis Oppenheim and with Jenny Holzer. He was awarded a study grant to work in Seattle at the Pilchuck School. He began to teach at the Bild-Werk Akademy in Frauenau, Germany, where he currently still teaches. 

He has received numerous residencies, including the Kohler Arts Center, Tacoma Museum, and four residencies at WheatonArts in New Jersey. He has been a visiting artist in Canberra, Australia, and Osaka, Japan. In 1993 he and his partner Sibylle Peretti founded the collaborative group Club S&S. Their work often takes the form of popular art, including flea markets and circus shows. Their exhibitions included 1822 at the CAC in New Orleans, Diluvial Hood at the Freies Museum, Berline, and an unofficial Souvenir Wagon for Prospect-1. They have been awarded many grants, including a Joan Mitchell career grant, a Pollack Krasner grant, and a Wharhol Foundation grant. 

Sibylle Peretti was born in Germany, where the rich tradition of glassmaking influenced the direction of her artistic training, and the abundant Bavarian forests inspired her choice of landscape as a predominant theme in her work. Using two-dimensional kiln-formed panels and three-dimensional lost-wax castings, Peretti composes narratives about the beautiful and poetic yet disrupted relationship between humans and the natural world. “I like to invite the viewer to journey into an unknown, undefined place of possibilities, mystery, and beauty where we find moments of clarity, solitude, and introspection.”

She received her MFA in Sculpture and Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Cologne and a Master’s in Glassmaking and Design from the State School of Glass in Zwiesel, Germany. Her work has won numerous awards, including Pollock-Krasner and Joan Mitchell Foundations grants. In 2012 she was the recipient of the United States Artists Fellowship. Her work is represented in the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art, The Hunter Museum of American Art, The Speed Museum, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, The Corning Museum of Glass, The Alexander Tutsek Foundation Munich, The Huntsville Museum of Art, The Barry Museum of Art, The Carnegie Museum of Art among others. Her work is represented by Heller Gallery. Sibylle Peretti works and lives in New Orleans, USA, and Cologne, Germany.