Fiber artist Sherri Smith: 'There's always room for surprises'

Fiber artist Sherri Smith: 'There's always room for surprises'

By JOHN CARLOS CANTU
NEWS ARTS WRITER 

If Sherri Smith, Professor of Art at the University of Michigan School of Art and winner of the 1989 Washtenaw Council for the Arts’ Annie award for “Excellence in the Visual Arts,” has a single defining artistic characteristic, it resides not only in her imagination, but also in her remarkable hands.

This is not to take anything away from her equally fine sense of color — a gift which heightens the brilliance of her fiber arts and defines them as unique works of art.

Her sure grasp of her materials, coupled with her patience for conceptualizing the final product as she braids it together, gives her hands a masterful sweep and practiced gesture which is as much poetry as it is practicality.

Indeed, on meeting Sherri Smith, one gains the distinct impression that her handiwork is as important an aspect of her art as is the final product itself.

In an interview at her studio one day after the awarding of her Annie for “expanding the realm of ordinary yarns and conventional weaves” — a phrase which only hints at the exceptional aesthetic advances she has made in this young artistic medium — Smith took a few minutes away from her latest project to discuss the inspiration for her artistry and the unique method she has devised to create these distinctive fiberworks.

Smith indicates she is a bit wondrous about the path her career has taken, although it is obvious in retrospect that she carefully prepared herself for her chosen endeavor. “My studies as an undergraduate at Stanford and graduate student at the Cranbrook Academy of Art were in textile design, however, like most young artists, I was anxious to set up a studio.

“I eventually got studio space in New York City and it was during this period that I began experimenting with wall installations. Even though my art had absolutely nothing in common with the textile work I was doing professionally, it became increasingly essential to my personal development.”

Smith described the rigors and joys of working nights and weekends on her projects, shyly admitting it was only with reluctance that she began to exhibit.

“I began showing my work,” she said, “and found the more involved I got into my artistry, the deeper I would get involved — that’s how interesting I found it.

“Then after a while, I found I was going to lose my studio partner and I had to make a choice: I could either find a new studio or leave New York City.”

After a moment of reflection, Smith continued, “This decision was also highly dependent upon a career decision because I decided I would either be a free-lance designer or become a teacher of the fiber arts.

“It seemed easier to teach, although this now seems like a simplistic way to arrive at a career decision, and I went first to Colorado State University and later here to help set up the University of Michigan’s fiber arts program.

Smith’s fiber art has evolved from a very flexible weave to the layered modular knot which has since become recognized as her signature style.

Her earlier fiber works have a shaggy layered look which have a sensual tactile quality. They are also reminiscent of the sort of fiber design which was very popular in the late ’60s and early ’70s with their massive wooly, drooping knitting.

What is distinctive about these works is their extended knot which was eventually to give way to the highly disciplined braided interlacing which currently structures her wall installation’s surface.

These latter works, created from three braided sets of dyed cloth strips, have color gradations which interlace within one another to create undulating, chromatic values.

‘I was originally developing a three-dimensional structure,” Smith said of the evolution of her fiber art style. “I was intent upon expanding the vocabulary of textile design and created my artwork because I was striving to develop a style which has a marked surface tension.

“I therefore work all over the map in terms of color. My chromatic choices arise out of my preliminary sketches and they are ultimately balanced because they have to work together.”

Pausing for a moment to study her work. Smith says, “I have quite a bit of control over what happens now. I plan my pieces very completely before I start, so I know what it will look like before I initiate the braiding.

“But I still have to look for the work’s overall image,” she says, “because I can only convey a delimited number of patterns or the piece will appear muddled.

“So it’s rather easy to make the colors gorgeous,” Smith says. “What isn’t so simple is to create art works which have conceptual impact. As such, I can tell when I’m doing my preparatory drawings if the compositional effect I’m after is there or not.

 “Yet the pieces are never like the drawings — the colors may not blend, or I have to tug at the braiding to get it uniform — but once I’ve committed the cloth to dyes, it becomes a matter of adjusting and finishing the work.”

Smith concludes her braiding by laying the balance of her strips of dyed cloth on the table in a carefully disordered mound. She studies her effort and finally concludes, “There’s always room for surprises.”

And this notion of surprise may actually best describe her fiber art.

Sherri Smith works with her cotton strands in her studio.
NEWS PHOTO • LARRY E. WRIGHT