Cheryl Molnar draws on childhood memories from suburban Long Island; she contends with tensions found between human progress and nature. Considering the impacts of gentrification, displacement, and climate change on sociocultural realities. In doing so, Molnar's collage-paintings depict landscapes of memory, pulling together reimagined environments and allowing viewers to reflect on memories and places they cling to but cannot return to.
Based in New York City, Cheryl Molnar is a collage and multimedia artist. Molnar received a Bachelor's of Fine Art from Rhode Island School of Design in 2000 and completed a Master's of Fine Art at Pratt Institute in 2005. She participated in her first solo and group exhibitions in 2006 including Life and Death of a City at McCaig-Welles Gallery in Brooklyn and the RISD Biennial at Exit Art in New York. Molnar has exhibited across the United States, including Smack Mellon in New York (2012), General Electric Headquarters in Connecticut (2008), EFA Gallery in New York (2018), University of Arizona (2012), and The Islip Art Museum on Long Island (2013). Molnar has been commissioned by Los Angeles County for the High Desert Restorative Care Center in Lancaster, California and by the New York Department of Cultural Affairs for a ceramic tile mural installation at PS19Q in Queens. As an artist Molnar continues to further her work and has completed residencies at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Fire Island National Park Service, Smack Mellon, and Cooper Union Summer Residency in New York. Her work can also be found in the collections of Cantor Fitzgerald, Thrivent Financial, and Microsoft.
Reflecting on memory and landscapes, but firmly rooted in discussions of human impact and the sociocultural implications of "development", Molnar's work blends together personal experiences and real places into fantastical landscapes of archival collage photography and gauche painting. Her works reflect on the irony of human interference in the natural world - focusing on the powerful desire to participate in the natural world leading to the eventual reality of changing it to suit human desires.