This artist has a “heart” for sports and other things

By Sally Tippett Rains

Sherry Been,  a Manhattan sculptor artist, who has ties to Missouri,  has a heart for wanting to bring people together and one way she is trying to do that is through her artwork, using hearts.

She has created many tribute hearts and has recently gotten into sports. She created the STL Sports Page artwork shown above.

“I  create tribute hearts for those who touch our lives, those who have overcome, and those for whom I feel gratitude,” said Sherry Been “It is my way of showing kindness and love to those who have shared our journey, and of creating a sense of community and connection.”

She is a sports fan and likes incorporating sports into many of her pieces, such as the recent one she did of former St. Louis Hawks great Bob Pettit, who at 23 won the NBA’s first Most Valuable Player award in 1956. Two years later, he scored 50 points to help the Hawks win the Championship for St. Louis.

“I smile when I imagine him as a superstar of that time, when so many people followed sports on the radio or read about the games in the newspaper,” she told STL Sports Page. “I think about the excitement he must have brought to his community, and the way a player can make people feel connected to one another.”

When she heard of Hall-of-Famer Pettit’s passing in September of 2026, she created this heart in the photo.

“To me, it honors not only what he accomplished on the court, but the strength, determination, and joy he gave to the people who followed him.

She seems to have a soft-spot for Missouri in her heart having fond memories of going up in the Arch, and maybe that’s why she thought of Pettit.

“I spent a lot of my younger years on trips to see extended family in Missouri, specifically the Kansas City area,” Been said.

She said her mother was huge baseball fan and perhaps she got her love of baseball from her.

“My brother was able to take my mom to two games the year the Kansas City Royals won the World Serie in 2015,” she said. “She passed away six months later but she was a huge sports fan. She should have been a baseball commentator on CNN. She could tell you every statistic and had a tremendous betting streak.”

Sherry Been has created tribute pieces on people from Dolly Parton, to Amy Winehouse to Gloria Steinham to memories form 911.

As she creates her MLB pieces, she thinks of things like that. To see her art and card collection, CLICK HERE.

She also did one with a Cardinals theme. Due to concerns about copyright infringement she did not include their logo but did try to match the colors close to the Cardinals color and incorporated the “baseball” theme.

“My hearts are made from enameled glass on copper,” she said. “To my knowledge, I am the only artist working in this medium for making sculptures.  You can see my work on my website at www.sherrybeenart.com.”

She has been able to make a living by commissioning art.  To see some of the ways individuals or companies can team up with her, visit her website. https://www.sherrybeenart.com/workwithus

“I like to watch what is happening in our world and remind myself and others of the remarkable people that have paved our way,” she said.

Because of that, she has made countless “tribute” sculptures of this type, including the one shown in the photo that is a tribute to Team USA winning the  2026 FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup in Sept. in Berlin.

St. Louisan Napheesa Collier who played at Incarnate Word before becoming an All-American and a WNBA star for the Minnesota Lynx was a member of that team.

The FIBA World Cup is the premier international basketball tournament where the best national women’s teams compete every four years for the world title, and other players on the team included Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese A’ja Wilson just to name a few.

“As of now, I don’t sell my hearts,” she said, “But I use them as tributes to those who touch our lives, to those that have overcome, and to those I feel gratitude for.

“It is my way of showing kindness and love to those who have shared our journey, and I try to do my part in creating community and making others know there is a connection. That’s why I created the basketball heart for the USA team last week for their gold win at FIBA.”

Her unique art form requires heavy lifting, both when she makes the item and in moving it to an exhibit, as shown in the photo. As of now she is trying to transition to something not so physically challenging.

“I fell a couple of years ago and can’t lift things in and out of the kiln,” she said. “So I have taken up painting and making these cards.”

She made the original heart with metal and glass, and then scanned it to have a digital version so she can create  these tribute items in a computer.

“I use AI using my original sculptures,” said Been. “For these versions, I use my 3-D version that was a tangible  and add the customizable images.  So at the end of the day, the print versions are AI.”

“I like to create the customized visual tributes,” she said. “At some point in the future, I hope to sell the licensing rights to a greeting card company, or anyone interested.  I also will be making customizable tribute hearts for people for a fee in the future.  I am just getting started in this new part of my journey.  I have spent my career so far mostly making sculptures.”

Sherry Been is known as a sculptor and enamellist and she learned her signature metal-shaping and glass-enameling techniques at the Boca Museum of Art in Florida.

Each sculpture that Been does  is formed by hand from copper, shaped to preserve the metal’s natural movement, folds, and grace. Sherry then applies enamel, a centuries-old process famously associated with the Fabergé eggs and fires the sculpture in a kiln at approximately 1,500 degrees.

Multiple layers of colored glass are applied and fired individually, giving each heart its luminous depth, texture, and distinctive character. The photo here shows another of her 3-D pieces of heart artwork.

The finished sculpture is then professionally photographed and carefully translated into a digital form, allowing its identity to evolve across new creative worlds while remaining unmistakably rooted in Sherry’s original artwork.

This allows one piece of artwork to span other art genres. A sculpture becomes a framed picture. She even uses AI to create the metal artwork and put it in photo form.

Maybe in the future she will be able to get back to the original metal art, but for now, she has a creative outlet in the area of cards or other printed material. We thought she has an interesting artistic medium which she is combining with sports and wanted to share it with our readers.

For more information on Sherry Been, visit her website: SherryBeenArt.com.