Shari Mendelson

Shari Mendelson (born 1961, Schenectady, New York) is an American artist and educator, known for her sculptures of animals, fertility figures, and vessels made of recycled plastic materials. She is based in Brooklyn and upstate New York in the Catskills.

About Shari Mendelson has a BFA degree from Arizona State University. She started creating this body of work in 2009. Mendelson would collect plastic bottles from her friends and family, as well as foraging for the prized bottles in the early mornings in Williamsburg. Her work visually references ancient Assyrian, Babylonian, Sasanian, Roman cultural art forms. In 2019, Mendelson was awarded a MacDowell Colony fellowship.

Her work is in various public museum collections including the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others. Her piece, Animal with Caged Vessel, was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of the Renwick Gallery's 50th Anniversary Campaign.