Charles Sherman (artist)
American artist known for Möbius-based continuum sculptures and sacred geometry jewelry.
Charles Sherman, born in 1947, is an American artist recognized for his continuum sculptures, which take a three-dimensional Möbius strip form. His work appears in public and museum collections, including the San Diego Museum of Art, the Mobile Museum of Art, and the Golda Meir Center for Political Leadership at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His sculpture Serenity (2006), from his monumental ceramic Infinity Ring series, is placed lakeside at the Fountain Park Sculpture Garden in Fountain Hills, Arizona, and also stands in front of the John Entenza House in Santa Monica, California, a building that preceded the Case Study Houses.
Quick Facts
- Born
- 1947
- Birthplace
- Atlantic City, New Jersey
- Field
- Sculpture
Facts from the source article.
Early work: The Spiritual in Art and the Goddess
Sherman’s early-career paintings, drawings, and prints depicted flowers, with close observation of their transformation from life to death, which he described as a gateway to his Goddess Series. In the 1980s he became a significant artistic interpreter of the Goddess movement, embracing feminine energy and creating a visual language inspired by archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. His depictions of Neolithic goddesses were described by Starr Goode as abstracted, fanciful images that sometimes verged on the grotesque. Goode interviewed Sherman for her cable series The Goddess in Art (1986–1991), now in the permanent collection of the Getty Research Institute. Sherman exhibited his predominantly black and white acrylic paintings in goddess-themed Los Angeles exhibitions, including The Goddess in Contemporary Art (1988) curated by Nancy Ann Jones at the Social and Public Art Resource Center. His paintings appeared in books such as The Once and Future Goddess by Elinor Gadon and as cover art for the poetry journal Sheela-Na-Gig. In 1993 he gave a painting workshop, "The Animal Goddesses of Old Europe", at the Craft and Folk Art Museum. Jungian archetypes of the feminine remain present in his later work, reduced to the Minimalist form of the Möbius.
Art and activism
Sherman has used performance art to express political viewpoints. During his 1989 presidency of the Los Angeles Artists' Equity Association, he assisted artist Tom Van Sant with the Goddess of Democracy project in downtown Los Angeles, a 1000-pound statue built in support of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The Los Angeles statue was toppled by vandals at its Chinatown location. In 1990, Sherman collaborated with feminist artist Cheri Gaulke in front of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for Who’s Burning America? He designed a large-scale billboard showing the American flag with a cigarette burning a hole through it, displayed on a truck parked in front of the museum, while Gaulke, dressed as Senator Jesse Helms, set an American flag on fire with a giant cigarette.
The Bible Series
In the early 1990s, Sherman began a series of bronze sculptures, drawings, and prints interpreting biblical characters, resulting from his study of the Old Testament. His Kabbalah Mandala motif first appeared in 1993 as an illustration in the book God, Sex and Kabbalah by Rabbi Allen S. Maller. In the catalogue introduction for "The Bible Series" (1998), Sherman wrote that the work dealt with issues of gender, spirit, and the Divine. His bronze sculpture The Two Faces of Eve (1996) depicts a nude Eve embraced by a female-faced serpent, a mirror image of herself. Other bronze sculptures include Jacob and Esau Wrestling in the Womb (1996) and The Warrior (1994), an homage to Deena Metzger. At the end of the century, Sherman created Golda (1999), a monumental bronze portrait head of Golda Meir, installed at the Golda Meir Center for Political Leadership at Metropolitan State University of Denver, where he was invited to lecture.
The Infinity Ring: Sculpture and Jewelry Design
Beginning in 2002, Sherman investigated circular forms he called Infinity Rings, based on a three-dimensional form of the Möbius strip. He first had to find a way to build monumental sculptures from clay that would withstand collapse during high-temperature kiln firing. He has continued to explore the form in diverse materials and combined rings into multiple-ring sculptures. Sherman incised words into his clay infinity rings, such as "God is a Verb", "Art is a Verb", "Love is a Verb", and verse fragments from the Bible like "I am to my Beloved as my Beloved is Mine" in English or Hebrew. His ceramic infinity ring sculpture God is a Verb appeared in the 2007 Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition at the San Diego Natural History Museum. Sherman has created infinity rings from bronze, stainless steel, Lucite, aluminum, and glass mosaic, but prefers clay, stating that the essence of art is a verb, not a noun, and that clay has a life of its own. He intends his sculpture to express universal spiritual values, and his later symbolic jewelry designs are miniature sculptures based on sacred geometry, incorporating symbols from world religions such as Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism. Sherman received First Place at the 1989 Los Angeles All City Art Open, First Place in Inspirational Design in the 2012 JCK Jeweler’s Choice Awards for his Trinity Cross pendant, and in 2014 the Jewelers of America selected him as one of ten new jewelry designers to debut at the JA New York Summer Show.
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