SHERRI SMITH
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Biography • Sherri Smith (b. 1943)
Born in Illinois, Sherri Smith grew up in Colorado Springs where her interest in textiles began in high school. She completed a BA at Stanford University in 1965 and an MFA in weaving and textile design at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan in 1967. Smith first went to work for Dorothy Liebes and then for Boris Knoll Fabrics, where she headed the Woven Design Department. Though her training was for the textile industry, Smith was anxious to set up a studio of her own to experiment with wall installations, moving into fiber art.
Smith’s first major success was the inclusion of her piece Volcano No. 10, 1967 in MoMA’s Wall Hangings curated by Mildred Constantine and Jack Lenor Larsen in 1969. For the piece, she used a loose waffle-weave to produce a multidimensional fabric beyond most loom processes. This gave her work depth that she accentuated with gradations of colors. Volcano No. 10 included purple, yellow, orange, and red. Her work contrasted with many fiber artists at the time who worked in raw, natural materials. She left the textile industry in 1971 to pursue her art. Smith first taught at Colorado State University and then founded the fiber program at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan in 1974.
Smith was included in the 1973 publication Beyond Craft: The Art Fabric by Mildred Constantine and Jack Lenor Larsen. By the time the follow-up, The Art Fabric: Mainstream was published in 1981, Smith had moved on to a new, equally influential series of reliefs made from plaited industrial cotton webbing. She hand-dyed these ribbons so that prismatic patterns emerged when they were braided that still recall the artist’s earlier waffle-weaves.
Smith’s fiber art has evolved from a flexible weave loosely held together to the layered modular knot created by disciplined braiding, which became her signature style by the late 1970s. She used a three-element plait to create a box-like surface with dyed webbing that emphasized the three-dimensional surface. At mid-range one focuses on the prism-like forms shading one into another. When taken as a whole, the texture of the three-element plait dominates the effect, heightened by Smith’s choice to have the overall work zig-zag up and down. These works have color gradations that interlace within one another to create undulating, chromatic values. Her play of color extends the illusion of three-dimensions further. In her process, she establishes her chromatic choices in preliminary sketches then moves to preparatory drawings where she limits the number of patterns in her conception of the work so that a single overall effect can be achieved.
In 2015 Sherri Smith was included in a major reappraisal of fiber art held at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston titled Fiber: Sculpture 1960-Present.
In more recent years she has created strip-woven wall-hangings with patterns derived from math, physics, and astronomy. Smith retired from teaching in 2018. In her honor, the exhibition Woven Together: The Influence Of Sherri Smith featuring 14 students inspired by Smith was held at Crooked Tree Art Gallery in Petosky, MI.
Her work has been acquired by important collections, including: Art Institute of Chicago, IL; De Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; Muskegon Museum of Art, MI; Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; and the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.
Major Exhibitions:
Wall Hangings, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 1969
Fiberworks: Traditions and Techniques, Cleveland Museum of Art, OH, 1977
The Art Fabric: Mainstream, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, 1981. Traveled to nine further museums.
Pattern: An Exhibition of the Decorated Surface, American Craft Museum (now Museum of Arts and Design), New York, 1982
Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical, American Craft Museum (now Museum of Arts and Design), New York, NY, 1986
Fiber R/evolution, Milwaukee Art Museum, WI, 1986
Fiber: Sculpture 1960-Present, 2014, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; traveled to Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH and Des Moines Art Centre, IA
Extreme Fibers: Textile Icons and the New Edge, 2015, Muskegon Museum of Art, MI