Artists Statement
It’s an honor and an obligation to contribute to my urban environment through my sculpture and environmentally conscious gardening activities. For much more than a decade now I have been creating and installing significant artworks for the community throughout the Bay Area. The community garden that I founded and coordinate in my home city of Emeryville, “Big Daddy’s Complete Rejuvenating Community Garden,” is aptly named as an inspirational force for an urban resurgence.
Communities seek a sense of their own identity, rooted in time and space. My work often keys on this need, dynamically uniting the sense of the place with its regional role, a metaphor that fuses the vision of past history with our vision of where we’re going.
Harvest in the Community Garden
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BIO
Over the last few decades, I've been awarded and completed numerous public art projects and private art commissions. I create large scale sculptures, that are exhibited in museums, galleries, and public spaces.
My most recent public art works include a 2026 Historical Park Markers project for 7 parks in Milpitas, California; exhibitions in the 2025 “What are you Worried About?” at RCCD Gallery, the 2024 “A Question of Balance” at Sonoma County Museum of Art and History in Santa Rosa; and curating the 2025 “Stamped and Approved--Emeryville Public Arts” exhibition for the Rotten City Cultural District Gallery; and curating and hosting the 2024 "Placemaking in the Urban Environment” series of events and symposium at Big Daddy’s Community Garden. Since 1989, I have shared my artworks in annual Emeryville Art Exhibition held in Emeryville California.
As part of my environmental work, I served on the Board of Directors and continue to work with Women's Eco Artists Dialogue (WEAD), which facilitates international networking among artists working with ecological and social justice issues. WEAD also shares information regarding the ecoart and social justice art fields to artists, curators, writers, art and public art administrators, educators in art and ecology, cross-disciplinary professionals and others.
I completed my MFA in Sculpture at Mills College in Oakland, California and my BFA at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana.
"Placemaking in the Urban Environment" Talk, 2026
Artists Rendezvous, Emeryville Artists Cooperative
Videos
Place Making & Place Keeping, 2022
Artists Vickie Jo Sowell and Daniel Galvez share their work with the Artists Exchange's "Place Making and Place Keeping" series on January 19, 2022. Hosted by Pamela Blotner, the Artists Exchange is an event for artists and art lovers that meets once a month on Zoom.
Ode to the Hairy Foot Flower Bee, 2021
There's a new bee hotel at Big Daddy's Complete Rejuvenating Community Garden!
Art on the Edge, 2021
Vickie shares her sculptural work inspired by the community garden and local underpass, as part of the "ART ON THE EDGE: from Extraction to Restoration and Regeneration" exhibition at Gallery Route One in Point Reyes, California. Vickie is speaking from minutes 34 to 37 in this video.
Studio Visit with Vickie, 2020
Vickie shares her artistic process and recent works from her Emeryville studio.