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Sheri Chillingworth lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Otis College of Art and Design with an emphasis in painting and ceramic sculpture. She is interested in the ideas that relate to how cultures interact, perceive, and manipulate the environment., History, personal experience, documentation, ecology, and technological methods provide the perspective.
The discourse between human interaction and cultural perceptions in the environment address manipulation and degradation occurring with no regard for preservation. A duality between the natural process of erosion and rejuvenation and the human interference of tearing down and building up fuels her process. Often taking the form of hand-built sculptural ceramics as well as carved wall pieces; her work draws inspiration, imagery, and techniques that derive from the landscape and phenomena occurring in the natural world. Materials are a vehicle for transformation of these concepts. From a historical perspective, clay is a universal medium having roots in all cultures. The unique skill of Mishima is a technique of layering color and transforming the surface. Through the process of addition, subtraction and layering, the clay provides a platform that mimics the duality that reveals itself in the work.
Having a multi-disciplinary practice, Sheri incorporates both painting and ceramic sculpture–forms develop organically as a result of thinking about them as ideas first without form. The work embodies an experimental nature using an alchemic approach where materials become the vehicle for transformation. This information ignites a dialogue that mimics the multiplicity of layers present in a constantly changing environment. Sheri has great respect for the work of the Bauhaus artists, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Joseph Albers, and appreciates abstract artists like Clyfford Still, Helen Frankenthaler and Lee Krasner. Sculpturally, she gains inspiration from Louise Bourgeoise, Lee Bontecou, June Kaneko, Arlene Shechet, Mai Tai Perret and Liz Larner.
Through this lens, her work conveys a constant survey of looking at the world around us. Art critic and theorist Lucy Lippard intertwines culture, history, geography and contemporary art and states, “Space defines landscape, where space combined with memory defines place."