ARTIST BIO


Madalyn Loucks Sorrell is a painter and metal sculptor based in Hillsborough, North Carolina. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2024. During her time at UNCG, Sorrell explored an interdisciplinary approach to painting. She particularly became interested in combining welding and metal fabrication processes with traditional oil painting techniques as a way to investigate her interests in as many ways as possible. She currently works as a production member at a forge in Durham, NC.

ARTIST STATEMENT

In my practice, I have been investigating bodily memory to reckon with personal identity and chronic illness. My work serves as an attempt to explore and challenge the displacement I feel in my own body. This displacement stems from experiences throughout my life where the body became a barrier between me and the ability to make decisions for myself. My work aims to reclaim autonomy through representations of these experiences. When I work with metal, the material demands a type of labor that feels ritualistic. It is a transaction between my body and the material. The heating and smashing of metal are metamorphic, not unlike how the body transforms during trauma. Metal, when under heat and pressure, becomes new. A new vessel for memory. Here, the broken thing becomes a testament to the resilience of the body rather than something invaluable. Changed and reassembled by my hands, this labor makes me the catalyst for these observable metamorphoses.

AWARDS

William Mangum Artistic Merit Award.
Issued by UNCG School of Art · Jan 2024


NCCCIAP Student Cupola Contest Community Choice Award
Issued by Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham, AL · Apr 2023

EXHIBITIONS

(upcoming) Skylight Gallery,
Hillsborough, NC,
July 31-August 23,
2026

Solo Exhibition, 
“Moving Through: Second Stop Edition,” 
UNCG Campus, 
Greensboro, NC, 
August 2025-May 2026

Solo Exhibition,
“Moving Through,”
Greensboro Project Space,
Greensboro, NC,
January 2025