Sheryl Oring

Sheryl Oring has typed thousands of postcards to the last four U.S. presidents since launching her Creative Capital project “I Wish to Say” in 2004. The work has been featured at dozens of universities across the country and at sites including Bryant Park in New York as part of the PEN World Voices Festival, the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, the San Diego Museum of Art, ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, MI, and the 01SJ Biennial in San Jose, CA.  In 2020, she performed a large-scale version of the project at the Brooklyn Public Library. Her book, “Activating Democracy: The I Wish to Say Project,” was published by University of Chicago Press. Besides Creative Capital, she has received grants from Franklin Furnace Fund, the New York Foundation for the Arts and the American Council on Germany. She is the first artist to join the Board of Directors of the National Coalition Against Censorship.

To date, 4,544 postcards have been sent to the White House as part of this project. An archive of the project from 2004 through 2016 is hosted by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro Library.