Kohler photos Rich Maciejewski.
The visual world is Michael Sherrill’s first language. “If I want
to talk,” he has said, “if I want to write my story, it is by creating
dimensional things that tell a story in the world.” The intensity
of this desire to be heard is evident in the clarity and the conviction
of Sherrill’s voice throughout the varied phases of his career.
The son of a self-taught inventor who patented industrial pro-
cesses and created machines out of his head, Sherrill was born into
what he terms a “making culture.” Standing now within sight of
the 26-foot sculpture,
New Growth,
that he created for the Bank
of America in Charlotte,
NC,
in 2003, he can look down the street
to the empty building that once housed his father’s machine shop.
As a youngster in the 1950s he would sit on an island of clean card-
board on the floor of this shop, playing with “punched out pieces
of steel and nails and old boards and hammers and tools. All around
me there’d be milling machines going and lathes and metal shavings
everywhere and my dad was walking around with a hot piece of
metal in his hand and a pair of pliers.”
Sherrill found school a daunting experience, but his humiliation
was mitigated by his almost preternatural understanding of every
material he touched; and his ability as “a maker of things” gave him
an important identity. He was diagnosed with dyslexia in high
school at about the same time as he discovered the medium of clay.
“I just fell in love with clay.
.. and the whole idea of seeing where
it could go and where I could take it was just like an epiphany or
a love affair.” After studying art at a community college for a year
and turning down a full scholarship to the Memphis Academy
of Art because it had no ceramics program, he moved to western
North Carolina in 1974, determined to become the best potter
he could be.
A member of the “back to the land” movement, Sherrill could
not afford to take classes at Penland School of Crafts, but his prox-
imity to the school brought him in contact with artists who exem-
plified the world to which he wanted to belong. Reflecting their
influence, he adopted the habit of making pots in series, pursuing
a single idea through multiple variations: “That sense of interjecting
discovery and play in my work became an early learning tool,”
he says, and a lasting sense of adventure has kept him engaged with
clay over more than three decades. His connection with Penland
has remained strong: he has exchanged information with artists in
many media during his frequent teaching stints there, and he at last
became a Penland student a few years ago when he took a flame-
working class with the glass artist Paul Stankard.
Characterized by an edge of excitement and a young man’s
energy, Sherrill’s early work was wheel-thrown, functional and
predominantly earth-toned. He investigated salt-glazed stoneware
and raku simultaneously, transferring techniques back and forth
between processes and exploring different methods of altering the
thrown form. He has characterized these early pieces as “potters’
pots,” in which the medium of clay and the processes of handling
and firing took center stage.
>
Sherrill’s handling of metal and glass, often involving
tools he has originated, is as sure as his toudh wifh clay.
The materials are frequently difficult to distinguish;
fhe work transcends medium.
Left:
Michael Sherrill at the
John Michael Kohler
Arts Center in 2006
reassembling patterns
used to make molds to
cast metal. His purpose
was to experiment with
layered enamel the way
he works with layered
colors on porcelain.
The two towers,
L ik e
W a te r,
of multilayered
enamel on cast iron,
each 7x2 ft., are in the
j m k a c
collection.
apr/may 10 american craft 041
