Cheryl Engmann
Portfolio
Portfolio Statement
My creative work is shaped by academic exploration, professional experience, and personal introspection. My art and design journey began at Middlebury College, where cross-disciplinary courses allowed me to analyze social patterns within the built environment and find effective methods to distill my research visually. I used architecture as a vehicle for meaningful communication, cultural preservation, and the amplification of marginalized stories. Departing from architecture, I explored the communication, preservation, and amplification of my experience as a Black woman in America. Investigating Western historical knowledge’s influence on design and its portrayal of Black female bodies as hypersexualized and dehumanized, I became inspired by bell hooks’ “Oppositional Gaze.” I created designs that asserted my artistic authority, illustrating the reality of the Black female experience.
Continuing to celebrate my body in design, I investigated symbols reflecting my cultural identity. Starting with my mother’s Ghanaian kente cloth, I explored how the demonization of brown bodies influenced the Western study of similar styles. I observed chromophobia and minimalism –concepts I dissected within architecture–manifested within the graphic design world. Embracing color and complexity, I incorporated visual language from West African design and culture. My work evolved into a visual tapestry reflecting my Black culture.
This exploration extended into my dance practice. Inspired by the impassioned African Highlife music I grew up with and the soulful American jazz scene I found in New York, my movement became a vehicle for emotional processing- especially in response to feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, and suspension that often accompany existing in a Black body in America. Integrating generative design into movement projects, I translated these feelings into visual forms, developing a digital reflection of my emotional states. The liminality of digital systems visualized the uncertain in-between, while dance embodied the discomfort, creating space to reclaim a sense of presence through their interplay. I am eager to continue to explore the dialogue between digital art and movement, while collaborating with my New York dance community and incorporating elements of the city’s music scene.
Transitioning into a more expressive and personal work, I joined Mickalene Thomas’ studio as a Digital Designer, where multidisciplinary Black-joy-inspired art influenced my design approach. Drawing from skills honed in the studio, my digital work embraced collage-like graphics, using textures and patterns to articulate the intersectionality and juxtapositions of my identities.
The driving purpose throughout my creative practice has remained consistent: understanding methods of communicating marginalized communities’ nuanced stories. Exploring the interconnections between architecture, fine art, digital design, and dance through academic research, professional experience, and personal reflection has enriched my storytelling.
Seven Sisters Monument Proposal, 2021
Diagram and Sketch
Designed for a Middlebury College course, this monument mirrors the Seven Sisters' interdependence through a system of integrated components. Creating a space honoring Abenaki traditions and fostering communal reflection and healing deepened my interest in understanding how design can influence human experiences emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
SketchUp Rendering
This monument proposal honors the Indigenous Abenaki community in Vermont and acknowledges Middlebury’s colonial legacy. It features a rainwater system nourishing a garden of the Seven Sisters of Abenaki Agriculture. Situated between campus and town, it serves as a shared space for students, locals, and Abenaki community members.
LUMPS, 2022
LUMPS InstallationCollaborating with a partner, we crafted an installation of lumps on Middlebury College’s campus. Made from stuffed clothing, the lumps resemble body parts, pillows, fungi, beans, and more. They perform like algal growths, or bodies, interacting with each other and their surroundings—some have limbs or fingers.
LUMPS AssemblyWe repurposed clothing from the Recycling Center, dyed, stuffed, and sewed them, and then connected them to trees, benches, and bushes with twine and garden netting. As we installed them, these strange and slightly eerie body forms functioned as objects for viewers to observe from a distance without direct interaction.
LUMPS InstallationAfter installation, students found the area calming and spiritually resonant, engaging with the forms for comfort. This project influenced my exploration of immersive liminal space, inspiring future works that invite viewers to engage emotionally and actively with my work.
Reflections, 2023
Inspired by bell hooks’ Oppositional Gaze, I created this series to examine how Black female artists assert their artistic authority, redefine the gaze forced upon them, and acknowledge their bodies on their own terms. I embraced collage-like graphics, using varying textures to articulate the intersectionality and juxtapositions of my identities.
Staring in Mirrors
Digital Illustration
She Said To Be Looked At-Ness
Digital Illustration
She Said To Be Looked At-Ness #2
Moving Image Motion Exploration
W the Funk?, 2023
This series draws inspiration from West African Highlife and Zamrock album covers, as well as the vibrant aesthetics of Soul Train posters. As a dancer, I often visualize choreography while listening to music. This project translates that internal movement into digital form, capturing my personal connection to rhythm and sound.
Night of the ShimmiesDigital Illustration and Screen Print Color Study
Didn’t Cha Know?Digital Illustration and Screen Print Color Study
Kente Cloth and Ngozi Family Record Design Inspiration
While visiting my family home, I found my mother's kente cloth and old family photos, which I documented. We also listened to the band Ngozi Family. Their energetic music and album covers- combining bold graphics with band photographs- inspired me.
Dolling and Sir LomoDigital Illustration
I created imagined album covers layering my family photographs with designs of my mother’s kente cloth. The fusion of personal imagery and traditional Ghanaian textiles created a visual tapestry that celebrates my culture, weaving together familial memory and ancestral symbolism.
Lullaby Machine, 2024
Lullaby Machine PerformanceI collaborated on a dance piece called Lullaby Machine which explored ideas of nostalgia, spirals, scrolling, and eclectic digital landscapes.
Lullaby Machine Pamphlet ConceptI designed the program for the performance, inspired by the show's themes, lighting, and visual motifs. It included elements that illustrated technological and human interaction, examining how we navigate digital spaces and experience comfort through screens.
Lullaby Machine Pamphlet Design
Lullaby Machine Website Assets, 2025
Lullaby Machine Website Landing PageInspired by the dance piece, two of my collaborators created a digital rest-stop for sharing lullabies. They built the website, and I contributed illustrations, design assets, typography and color schemes.
https://lullabymachine.com/
Lullaby Machine Website Digital Assets
Evolving from my original pamphlet, this design took on a more dreamlike form, emphasizing digital nostalgia, comfort, dreamscapes, early-2000s liminality, fluorescence, and slumber.
Suspended in Liminal, 2025
Suspended in the Liminal Research and ProcessI continued this exploration of digital liminal space. Examining my relation to feelings of in-betweenness, anxiety, and uncertainty, I developed movement prompts embodying these sensations. Collaborating with my dance partner from Lullaby Machine, Maia Sauer, we brought these prompts into the dance studio, crafting phrases that explored thresholds, suspension, transitions and impending doom.
Shots of Dance International Film - Suspended in the Liminal Inspiration
I recorded our movement and put the footage into TouchDesigner. I was inspired by 90s internet dance visuals, like Stuart Shapiro’s video magazine Dance International, which combined dance and music documentary footage with graphics, glitch effects, and retro-futuristic designs.
Suspended in the Liminal
Digital Movement Exploration
Music: Time Traveler by KNOWER, 2025
Creating a PointCloud in TouchDesigner from our video merged our fluid movements with fragmented, glitch-inspired visuals, creating an interplay between the organic and digital. I am currently experimenting with these visuals as a work-in-progress and envision evolving them into a long-form dance film or a live performance with kinetic projections.
Shorebirds, 2025
Short Digital Dance Film
My dance partner, Maia, and I continued developing this movement. This work-in-progress dance film is composed of rehearsal footage from Shorebirds, our live duet performance set to premiere on the beach.
Shorebirds explores the mundane and the mythical, the body and its reflection, and decay and rebirth. Using Adobe Premiere, this film digitally experiments with our movement research as we navigate these ideas.