WELCOME TO THE WEBSITE OF ARTIST KELLY SHERMAN
PRESENTER & PANELIST AT THE INDUSTRIAL DESIGNERS SOCIETY OF AMERICA
Next Up: Sustainability After the Trend
IDSA Rhode Island
Thursday, September 25, 2008, 5:30 – 7 pm
Cocktail reception to follow from 7 – 8 pm
September 2008. I'll be presenting and participating in a panel discussion at the upcoming IDSA conference in Providence, titled Next Up: Sustainability After the Trend. Other presenters include Meaghan O'Neal, the founding editor of TreeHugger and the editor for Planet Green. TreeHugger is the leading media outlet dedicated to driving sustainability mainstream, and Planet Green is the first and only 24-hour eco-lifestyle television network. Also presenting is Emily Pilloton, the founder of Project H Design, a charitable non-profit organization focused on humanitarian product design solutions. There will also be a materials Petting Zoo, provided by Ecolect, the world's most comprehensive database of environmentally friendly materials.My colleague Sean Brennan and I will present Colorblind, a recent project we worked on together at Continuum. The project goal was to understand how people think and feel about the environment, so that our clients, other companies, and designers at large can help consumers make more green choices by communicating appropriately through design. Go to the website to learn more about the project and our findings.
DESIGN STRATEGY AT CONTINUUM
August 2008. For the past year I've been working as a Design Strategist at Continuum, a global design and innovation consultancy. Continuum is comprised of design strategy, brand experience, and product innovation experts who create design solutions that lead to profitable business innovation. We work on interdisciplinary design teams to help business leaders recognize opportunities, identify breakthrough ideas, and then make those ideas real. My clients so far have been diverse: a credit card company, cell phone service provider, a fork-lift manufacturer, a hotel chain, and even in one case, the environment. Each project starts with interviewing and observing people using standard (and sometimes not so standard) ethnographic practices. The project team then takes all the research back to the studio to deconstruct, make sense of, and then use to inspire innovation. See Continuum's website to learn more about the work, process, designers, and our many clients.
ESSAY BY MAGGIE JACOBSTEIN
The ICA: Conjuring the Space Between
Essay by Maggie Jacobstein
May 2008. Maggie Jacobstein, a student in Harvard Graduate School of Education's Arts in Education program, uses my work at Institute of Contemporary Art to examine "the relationship between the museum visitor, art, and the physical space of a museum." She sees the relationship as "one which could mirror the active role that viewers play in the 'making of' conceptual art." Her essay titled, The ICA: Conjuring the Space Between, can be downloaded in PDF format by clicking on the link below."The wonder that I felt about the people behind Kelly's art is parallel to the wonder that I feel towards the ICA's overall structure—where are the visitors' voices that could make this space intriguing? Where does the inspiration for the space, and art, come from? In both cases, I know it comes from somewhere—it is just not transparent immediately. I think that for the building, as well as Kelly's art, the sense-making comes when the visitor makes his or her own connections—thus, bringing the abstract spaces to life."
The ICA: Conjuring the Space Between by Maggie Jacobstein
AUCTION AT MASSART
MassArt's 19th Annual Benefit Art Auction
The Massachusetts College of Art
The Sandra and David Bakalar Gallery & The Stephen D. Paine Gallery
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Doors open at 6 pm
March 2008. Two of my pieces will be for sale at the MassArt Annual Benefit Art Auction, which is the school's major fund raising event of the year. This year, over 300 nationally and internationally renowned artists will participate in the auction. Doors open at 6 pm and the Live Auction will begin at 7:30 pm with Auctioneer Karen Keane, CEO Skinner, Inc. The Silent Auctions remain open throughout the evening. Preview the work online.EVENT & EXHIBITION AT THE BEEHIVE
Beehive-Art-Scope 1
The Beehive
April 1, 2008
7 pm – 10 pm
March 2008. The Beehive launches the first of an ongoing art series, of which I'll be a part. Beehive-Art-Scope 1 promises an evening filled with video, performance, music and cocktails, as well as a collection of art installations. Musicians and artists include Sarah Jane Bardy, Brady Bonus, Brian Burkhardt/Tanit Sakanini, Cyrille Conan, Claire Eder, Laura Evans, Samantha Fields, Erica Greenwald, James Hull, Bryce Kaufmann, Andrew Mowbray, Jeff Perrott, Isabel Riley, George Rosa, Owen Rundquist, The Sewer Rats (with John Lockwood, Nat Mugavero and Leo Genovese), Jeff Smith, Hilary Tolan, Joe Wardwell, Douglas Weathersby, Rachel Perry Welty, Brian Zink, and Nabila Zoraya Santa-Cristo.EXHIBITION AT BALTIMORE PRINT FAIR
Center Street Studio, Booth 11
Baltimore Fair for Contemporary Prints & New Editions
Baltimore Museum of Art
Saturday, March 1, 2008 & Sunday, March 2, 2008
11 am – 5 pm
March 2008. Center Street Studio will be exhibiting a selection of my work at the Baltimore Fair for Contemporary Prints & New Editions. Twelve major contemporary art dealers, galleries, and presses convene at the Baltimore Museum of Art, including Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl, Goya Contemporary & Goya-Girl Press; Harlan & Weaver, Inc., Jungle Press Editions, Jim Kempner Fine Art, Maryland Institute College of Art, Pyramid Atlantic, Solo Impression, and Charles M. Young Fine Prints & Drawings.EXHIBITION AT UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND MUSEUMS
Publishing Prints: Selections from the Center Street Studio Archives
Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center
University of Richmond Museums
February 6, 2008 – April 9, 2008
February 2008. In celebration of the establishment of the Center Street Studio archives as part of the collection of the Harnett Print Study Center, this selection of prints and related material highlights the range of the collection. The exhibition features prints by seventeen artists, including Todd McKie, Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, Charles Ritchie, Richard Ryan, John Walker, and John Wilson.ESSAY BY KATELYN MARTENS
Conceptual Art and Contemporary Audience:
The necessity and subordination of object and information in the work of Kelly Sherman
Essay by Katelyn Martens
February 2008. Katelyn Martens, a student in the Tufts University program through the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, looks at Conceptual Art's relationship to its audience over the years, using my work as a point of contrast. Her essay, titled Conceptual Art and Contemporary Audience, can be downloaded in PDF format by clicking on the link below."Sherman is taking the sort of stoic visual language invented by artists like Kosuth and Baldessari. But her thematic agenda—that is, what she is expressing and why—contrasts quite distinctly from how she expresses it. She explores themes that are inherently personal and emotionally untidy. Sherman is not looking to solve metaphysical mysteries about object and word and image, like the Conceptual artists of the late 1960s. Rather, she is ordering and abbreviating volumes of emotional information. Sherman exposes subjects that are explosive in our current culture. She does not shroud her work in big ideas, in blockbuster terms. Her themes are relatable. Divorce, poverty, the American Dream. These are things that are rooted in life and culture. These are things the viewer doesn't have to work so hard to wrap his mind around."
Conceptual Art and Contemporary Audience by Katelyn Martens
EXHIBTION AT BARBARA KRAKOW GALLERY
Print Publisher's Spotlight: Center Street Studio
Barbara Krakow Gallery
January 19, 2008 – February 27, 2008
January 2008. Barbara Krakow Gallery's side room highlights works published by Center Street Studio as well as works from their inventory, including pieces by artists Kate Shephard, Scott Hadfield, and Sally Moore. My recent woodcut from the series titled Brides, published by Center Street Studio will be on view.PRINT SERIES RELEASED WITH CENTER STREET STUDIO
January 2008. I just finished signing the last of what was a technically challenging series of woodblock prints, published with the expertise of Center Street Studio and the studio's master printer James Stroud. The series of five reduction woodcuts, each titled Brides, uses figures taken from the pages of bridal magazines. In each image, a bridal figure—simplified into a silhouette—is pictured right side up and again upside-down. From these iconic bridal figures and their enigmatic shadows emerge complex shapes and abstracted objects: Rorschach inkblots, islands, ghosts, phalluses, nuns, and swans. The bride figures become decorative, object-like, serial, and as mute as the white of the paper. Indeed the primary white figure of each print is created from the white of bare paper, the negative space of the woodblock. My interest in the bride symbol is driven by contemporary culture's broad objectification of brides and by the reverence of this very same objectification. The work engages topics of beauty, femininity, objectification, and cultural expectation, as well as struggles of personal identity.
EXHIBITION AT BARBARA KRAKOW GALLERY
The Annual AIDS Benefit
Barbara Krakow Gallery
December 1, 2007 – December 19, 2007
December 2007. Barbara Krakow Gallery's annual group exhibition benefits organizations working in the fight against AIDS. All works in the show are available for $350, which goes to the Boston Pediatric AIDS Project and The African AIDS Initiative. I'm donating a sketch—pictured at left and made from white artist tape on a magazine page—which helped inspire an upcoming woodblock print series titled Brides.LECTURE AT THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS
Riley Seminar Room
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 12:30 pm
October 2007. In this lecture at the Museum of Fine Arts, I will discuss the evolution of my artwork and its influences. The event is free and open to the public.
EXHIBITION AT ARTISTBOOK INTERNATIONAL
Center Street Studio, Booth 18
ArtistBook International
Centre Pompidou, Paris
October 19 – 21, 2007
October 2007. Center Street Studio will be exhibiting my work at the 6th ArtistBook International, held this year at the Centre Pompidou. Also on view will be Richard Ryan's XXII portfolio with poems by Susan Fox. The event is free and open to the public.
PROFILE IN SKIRT!
October 2007. skirt! came to Center Street Studio inbetween our busy printing sessions to profile me for their Boston debut. Started in 1994 in South Carolina, skirt!'s monthly magazine for women has tripled in size and gone national, with its print editions available in mostly southern cities of the US. Look for it on your local street corner.skirt! profile by Alison O'Leary Murray, photography by Shannon Power, October 2007
EXHIBITION AT JULIE CHAE GALLERY
Prelude
Julie Chae Gallery
September 7, 2007 – October 27, 2007
Opening Reception on Friday September 7, 2007 from 5 – 8 pm
September 2007. Prelude is the inaugural exhibition of the new Julie Chae Gallery. Introducing artists the gallery plans to feature in the coming year, the exhibition includes work by Katherine Bernhardt, Brian Chippendale, Amanda Church, Alexander DeMaria, Franklin Evans, Julie Evans, Jackie Gendel, Jungil Hong, Perry Hu, Dorota Kolodziejczyk, Cynthia Lin, Owen Rundquist, Barbara Takenaga, and Dannielle Tegeder. My recent photoetching titled To Move (Ours. Mine.), published by Center Street Studio will be on view.Boston Globe article by Cate McQuaid, October 4, 2007
Boston Globe "Globe Pick" by Ken Johnson, September 30, 2007
EXHIBITION AT THE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART / BOSTON
Accumulations
Institute of Contemporary Art
July 25, 2007 – July 6, 2008
July 2007. Accumulations is the Institute of Contemporary Art's second showing of work from their permanent collection. Organized by Curator Jen Mergel, the exhibition highlights the museum's most recent acquisitions, including works by artists such as Cornelia Parker, Tara Donovan, Rineke Dijkstra, Julian Opie, Lucy McKenzie and Christian Jankowski. A rotating selection of prints from my piece Wish Lists is on view and the audio tour includes commentary.
RESIDENCY AT THE HALL FARM CENTER
July 2007. I have been granted an artist residency at the Hall Farm Center, during which I will be living and working with other artists and writers. I plan to develop a new body of work using silhouettes of brides, a project I began at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts.
PRINT RELEASED WITH CENTER STREET STUDIO
May 2007. Under the direction of master printer James Stroud, Center Street Studio has just published my recent photoetching titled To Move (Ours. Mine.). Comprised of a pair of photoetchings, the piece was printed from a copper plate that bears a list of belongings brought jointly into a relationship. The original list is altered to remove some of the entries, describing the ultimate failure of the relationship. Their website includes pictures of the finished piece, my statement about the work, and a brief video describing how the print was made.
RESIDENCY AT THE KIMMEL HARDING NELSON CENTER FOR THE ARTS
May – June 2007. I have been granted an artist residency at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, during which I will be living and working with four other artists, writers, and composers. I used the time to complete this website as well as the Wish Wall Mural website. I did writing and reseach for a couple of projects, and began developing one project based on pages from bridal magazines.
COMMUNITY ART MURAL & PUBLIC SCHOOL RESIDENCY
April – May 2007. The Wish Wall Mural project was a collaboration with Lucy McMullen's 4th grade class at the Graham & Parks Alternative Public School and those with interest from the Cambridge/Somerville neighborhood in Massachusetts. The seventeen fourth-graders and interested community members ultimately created a conceptual wall mural on side of the Thistle & Shamrock Convenience Store, at the corner of Walden and Richdale Streets in Cambridge.Each person wrote a personal wish on one brick of the wall, then painted over it. Among other things, this pair of actions references graffiti writing, the concealment or erasure of unwanted graffiti, and the folk belief that keeping a wish secret ensures it will come true. Seven in-depth classroom discussions at Graham & Parks School addressed topics relevant to the project: conceptual art; urban wall painting, graffiti, and murals; and the nature of hope, secrets and wishing. The project is fully documented on the website www.wishwallmural.com.
JAMES & AUDREY FOSTER PRIZE
February 2007. I'm honored to receive the James & Audrey Foster Prize, granted by the Institute of Contemporary Art and would like to thank the Fosters for their tremendous generosity.
EXHIBITION AT THE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART / BOSTON
James & Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition
Institute of Contemporary Art
December 10, 2006 – March 11, 2007
Novermber 2006. The Institute of Contemporary Art reopens this winter with a new waterfront building. Work by the James & Audrey Foster Prize finalists: Sheila Gallagher, Jane D. Marching, Kelly Sherman and Rachel Perry Welty will be on view. The winner of the $25,000 biennial prize, "recognizing Boston-area artists whose work demonstrates adventurousness, conceptual strength, and skillful execution," will be announced in February.
ARTIST-IN-RESEARCH AT THE BERWICK RESEARCH INSTITUTE
April – July 2006. During my term as Artist-in-Research at the Berwick Research Institute, I will be investigating seating plan arrangements in the context of weddings: how complex family relationships are confronted and mediated via event seating arrangements. I'm interested in how an issue so practical in nature can both produce and assuage emotional tension and conflict. I'm also drawn to the spatial, physical characteristics of this topic and the possibilities for an analysis that is both conceptual and visual.