ARTIST ANGELA ROGERS: “DANCE, SPIRIT, DANCE!”

A NEW YORK-BASED ARTIST KNOWN FOR HER SMALL, MAGICAL, TAROT-INSPIRED FIGURES CREATES HER LARGEST SCULPTURE EVER

Published on December 16, 2025

by Edward M. Gómez

We first examined Angela Rogers’ art in 2022, following her participation in the Outsider Art Fair, which took place in New York in March of that year, the last year of the coronavirus pandemic. At that time, Rogers’ works were on view in the booth of Fountain House Gallery, a New York-based institution with which she is still associated today. (Angela Rogers on Instagram: @angelajrogers)

The intravenous-drip support stand, on wheels, that Angela Rogers used as the main armature for her mixed-media sculpture “Spirit,” and the scrap of driftwood that became the support for the artwork’s arms. Photo courtesy of the artist

Back then, we took note of Rogers’ mixed-media figures — her “Poppets” — with their outstretched arms, mermaid-like tails, heads bound up like stuffed sausages, and probing eyes. Fabric, colored thread, cowrie shells, beads, little ornaments, and other materials go into the making of Rogers’ talisman-like figurines, which, she told us, are derived from the well-known principal characters of the tarot, the centuries-old card set that has long been used to play games and as a tool for fortune-telling.

Rogers is a self-taught artist who, several years ago, following brain surgery, developed a seizure disorder. To date, she has created several original tarot-card decks, in each of which she has interpreted such familiar characters as the Magician, the Fool, the High Priestess, and the Sun. An experienced tarot-card reader, she has long been interested in the occult and esoterica.

Angela Rogers’ sculpture “Spirit” as a work-in-progress earlier in 2025. Photo courtesy of the artist

It was some time after her surgery that Rogers, who was born in West Virginia, grew up in North Carolina, and today lives in New York, started producing her mixed-media figures. She told brutjournal, “I didn’t go to art school but in the late 1980s, I studied experimental theater in at New York University in Manhattan.”

Earlier this year, Rogers again showed her creations at the Outsider Art Fair. She also finished making one of her largest-ever sculptural works. Titled “Spirit,” this piece is more than six feet tall and resembles a standing human figure with a long, slim torso; tree branches extending out from its sides; and thick, tentacle-like protrusions — its arms — that bring to mind overgrown hair braids or some mysterious kind of animal’s serpentine tails.

In the studio: Angela Rogers used a corset for her sculpture’s torso and gave it long, tentacle-like arms. Photo courtesy of the artist

We asked Rogers to tell us about the making and meaning of “Spirit,” on which she began working in March 2024.

Referring to a form of psychically charged, avant-garde dance that emerged in Japan after World War II, she recalled, “I came up with the idea for ‘Spirit’ in February 2024. I wanted a headless sculpture with which I could dance butoh. From the start, I knew it was going to be a large-scale sculptural work, because I wanted an impressive visual element to go with my butoh dance.”

She added, “The sculpture is wrapped around its armature, which is made from an IV [intravenous] stand. At the time, I had recently been in the hospital, where I had been hooked up to an IV stand.” As it turned out, someone had donated an actual IV stand to the Fountain House art-making studio, where Rogers is a participating artist, so she was able to use it for her new work-in-progress. She said, “I knew it would be easy to manipulate as part of my dance performance.”

Rogers explained, “To make ‘Spirit,’ I used pillows, fabric, driftwood, the IV stand, wire, yarn, charms, a corset, thrift-shop sweaters, and other found objects. I put every fabric on the IV stand to see what would work [or not] so that I could get an idea of what flowed and what didn’t. I started with wire and [scraps of] driftwood for arms, then brought out all of my white and lighter-colored fabrics to see how they hung [on the IV-stand frame]. Then came the pillows and the gold-mica-painted corset. Then I wrapped [the figure] with tons of fabric and wire. Because of its size, I counted on the help of my studio director, Karen Gormandy.”

Angela Rogers likes to display “Spirit” alongside a group of the small, talisman-like figures she calls her “Poppets.” Photo courtesy of the artist

“Spirit” certainly marks a departure from the smaller sizes of her more intimate-feeling figurines. Rogers observed, “I decided to go big with this work, because I had been wanting to take [my smaller figures] to the next level. I had recently been named a permanent resident at Fountain House’s studio, a status that now allowed me more dedicated space and the ability to work bigger.”

We asked Rogers about she might like to display “Spirit,” especially given its size. Referring to her sculpture as a female creature, she said, “I have a lot of ideas for this piece. One of them is to travel with her. Another is to activate this work through performance and movement. I often display ‘Spirit’ surrounded by smaller Poppets to symbolize the elements of nature.” (See the photo above showing the large sculpture installed in a gallery room’s corner, with a selection of Rogers’ Poppets displayed on the walls right next to it.)

“Spirit” exudes the vibe of an unusual, surrealist sculpture, an object that might have been inspired by dreams or that somehow conjured itself up out of the art-studio ether.

Introducing “Spirit” in a brief, descriptive text she penned herself, Rogers notes that this large work “is the newest character in [my] menagerie of magical beings.” The artist adds, “She is a tall, glamorous wraith whose destiny is wrapped around the IV pole [out] of which she was conjured up and built. She is held together by benevolent spells and safety pins. She holds the wilds and [the] forests in her persona, and inhabits a dream limbo between life and death. She is in psychic training to become her creatures’ dance partner in a butoh ritual — her ultimate purpose. Dance, Spirit, dance! “