ABOUT

We name things to give them meaning, sometimes with intention and sometimes without. Abby Sherrill is interested in the meaning of objects, the mundane and the banal, and recreating the ephemeral moment in which we notice these things. Sherrill names her world by creating abstract images from existing objects. The images are often manipulated scans, or printed copies patched together. The intent of the work is to rediscover the routine through her art-making process, and create a dialogue between objects and space that discuss our ever-changing perception of reality.

The way in which we move – the speed, the direction, the position – creates a specific pattern of seeing and experiencing the world. Through motion we measure time and space, rotating furiously, daily, with light to remind us of change. We define the things around us by whether it is us, or them standing still, like the sound of a passing plane, or the lull of anticipation. As we compile these patterns of experience, we share and inherit air in language, and in the sky, and with gravity keeping us all moving with feet on, or just above, the ground.

Sherrill’s work engages the philosophical and psychological spaces between images and text. She is influenced by Michel Foucault’s essay “This is Not A Pipe” on Rene Magritte’s painting of the same name. Foucault dissects the complex relationship between image, symbols and text within a composition, and the perceived reality within. To explore this concept, she creates patterns by layering text over itself, leaving an optical illusion that blurs the message, as if to imply that the work has already moved past the viewer. The meekness of the mundane leads her to investigate objects and images scattered through life, looking for connections between meaning, purpose, and function. 

Abby Sherrill is a visual artist working with digitally printed images to create two and three-dimensional manipulations. Sherrill creates scanned images of physical materials that are printed and altered to explore ideas of space, reality and memory. With an interest in pattern and text, the work is created through recursive processes of tracing, reflecting and re-documentation, often resulting in a hazy visual that disorients the real and the implied.

Abby has exhibited widely across Texas with shows at Galleri Urbane (Dallas), 500X (Dallas) and Rudolph Blume Fine Art (Houston). In 2015, she was awarded a Nasher Sculpture Center Micro-Grant for a collaborative artist collective project, Brick Haus Collective. Sherrill holds an MFA in Fibers from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas, where she currently lives and works

PAST Exhibitions:

Link to Exhibition Pages>>

Moody Swatch (2019) View Exhibition >>

Modes of Moving Air (2017) View Exhibition >>