Claire Sherwood

Claire Sherwood’s tactile sculptures investigate the abilities and constraints of materials in reference to the physical world. Using a wide variety of non-traditional sculptural building supplies sherwood casts, carves, slathers and pushes her materials into a new state of being. The sculptures, when complete, resemble rock, bone or other natural organic forms referencing unearthed artifacts or strange collections or studies. Sherwood’s interest in the intersection of the domestic home, the natural landscape and broad philosophical theories feed her studio practice.

Sherwood received her MFA from the University of Maryland as a David C. Driskell fellowship recipient. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States in venues such as, the U.S. Smithsonian National Botanic Garden, the Corcoran Museum of Art, Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Cornish College in Seattle, WA, Grounds for Sculpture, in Hamilton, NJ and numerous galleries, museums and colleges in upstate NY and the New England region.She has received numerous awards and grants, including the New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Grant, New York State Strategic Opportunity Stipend, Southeast College Art Association Award of Distinction, Ohio River Border Initiative Grant, International Sculpture Center/ Sculpture Magazine: Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture.

Teaching is tightly woven into Sherwood’s artistic practice. Non traditional teaching workshops include: Working with the  Baylor Women’s Correctional Institution in Wilmington, DE with maximum-security inmates addressing issues of women’s domestic spaces and non-traditional roles of women (sponsored by the NEA, the State of WV, and The Delaware Center for Contemporary Art). She has piloted programs with at-risk populations in Huntington, WV resulting in permanently installed site specific sculptures and in 2018 she completed a series of community based ceramic workshops in rural upstate NY. Currently, Sherwood is a co-coordinator for the Upstate NY chapter of The Feminist Art Project and the art teacher at The Robert C. Parker School, a progressive based Independent school outside of Albany NY.

In Ms. Sherwood’s own words:

Observing and building from “nothing” has a funny way of validating my existence as a woman, mother, and artist. Constructing from the detritus of my home, I create both artifact and catalog, glorifying and elevating the banality of everyday life. The building supplies and inspiration for my objects stem from discarded materials reclaimed from my family’s recycling bin or the scrap yards of the industrial landscape of America. From trash and swept dirt, to discarded concrete, steel and coal, these vastly different materials are often married together to highlight and question the role(s) of industrial and domestic labor.

My varied approach to art making has resulted in collections that are sculptures, photographs, installations and wall hanging pieces. Despite the variety of techniques employed in the studio, each body of work dovetails to the next through careful examination of surface textures and the transformation of materials. Through layering and covering up, I work to disguise and move the viewer to an unexpected place. At first glance the work appears pretty or decorative, upon closer examination, more complex intricacies are revealed raising questions around purity, function and strength.