Artist Statement

My drawings begin with images drawn from contemporary life—crowds, performers, public figures, press mobs, and the theatricalized spaces where culture displays its anxieties. I’m interested in how humor, exaggeration, and caricature can reveal something psychologically true, and how a dense, overloaded composition can echo the overstimulation of modern experience. Through improvisation, distortion, and reassembly, the work becomes a way of thinking on paper: a search for meaning in our noisy, crowded culture.

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Biography

Pete Sparber is a Philadelphia-based artist whose drawing practice examines the psychological density of contemporary culture through complex, improvisational compositions. He holds an MFA from Cornell University and returned to full-time studio work after a long global career in corporate leadership, including six years in Shanghai and Tokyo. He has recently begun exhibiting his work in and around the city, and is working with InLiquid to found Art & Image Philadelphia, a journal covering the city's visual arts ecosystem.

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Art & Image

Philadelphia Interviews

• Meantime on Market (interview with Brian Phillips, architect and founder of the Meantime on Market initiative)

• Walking through a Nation of Artists with Lea C. Stephenson (Curator of Historical American Art at PAFA).

• Using Art to Build Collective Resilience (interview with Sam Connors, Executive Director of DaVinci Art Alliance).

• Village of Industry and Art (interview with Bok developer Lindsey Scannapieco).

• State of the Arts: One Year Later (interview with five Philadelphia non-profit leaders).

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Articles and Publications

2023
Work Featured in Summer 2023 Edition of Philadelphia Stories

2012 and 2013
Cover Art for Business Directory and Neighborhood Resource Guide (NE Philadelphia)

2012
Peter Sparber: A second spark in an artistic career Feature Article in 'Metro', Philadelphia Inquirer

Education

Cornell University, MFA

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Exhibitions

Group

2026
Black and White Annual Juried Exhibition, Abington Art Center, Jenkintown, PA
Show prize for a 'Claridge Boxer’.

Lines are marked, yet we are all outsiders, Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

2025
Make-it-Pop!, InLiquid Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Huddle, Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA

2024
Voice of the People, InLiquid Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Exhibited American Elegy series, a 5 drawing set exploring the contemporary American political scene‍

New Now VII, InLiquid Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
New Member Exhibition

InLiquid Toasts 25, Off the Wall Gallery at Dirty Franks, Philadelphia, PA

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Solo

2027
Kellner Gallery at Abington Art Center, Jenkintown, PA

2012
Highwire Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

2011
Highwire Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

2005
One Person Show, Fishaus, Wichita, KS

One Person Show, Wichita Center for the Arts, Wichita, KS