Mouths to Feed

The son of an inventor, Michael Sherrill grew up in what he calls “a making culture.” Raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, he moved to the mountains of western North Carolina in 1974. He had discovered ceramics in high school, and he was determined to teach himself to become a potter. He was encouraged by the artists of the indigenous North Carolina folk pottery tradition that surrounded him, and the community created by the nearby Penland School of Crafts. Over the course of his career, Sherrill moved from making functional to nonfunctional vessels. Eventually, he shifted his focus to nature, and to the sculpture that it inspired. He learned to work metal and glass, and to incorporate it with ceramic in a way that can be only described as seamless. In Sherrill’s pieces, “the materials all seem to become one,” says North Carolina sculptor Stoney Lamar. “You don't look at his work and break it down. It works as a kind of singularity that is phenomenal.” Sherrill’s floriform sculptures are loosely based on the plants he finds outside of his rural studio. While this work may be related to the famous glass botanical studies of the Bohemian artists Leopold Blaschka (1822–1895) and Rudolf Blaschka (1857–1939), Sherrill’s plants are not scientific, but come from his imagination. The early years of the American studio glass movement were dominated by artists who moved from making ceramics to glass. Sherrill’s work joins that of other noted ceramists in the Museum’s collection who have experimented with the material, such as Betty Woodman (American, b. 1930), Viola Frey (American, 1933–2004), and Michael Lucero (American, b. 1953).