Biography
Claire Sherwood’s tactile sculptures investigate the abilities and constraints of materials in reference to the physical world. Using a wide variety of non-traditional sculptural building supplies sherwood casts, carves, slathers and pushes her materials into a new state of being. The sculptures, when complete, resemble rock, bone or other natural organic forms referencing unearthed artifacts or strange collections or studies. Sherwood’s interest in the intersection of the domestic home, the natural landscape and broad philosophical theories feed her studio practice.
Sherwood received her MFA from the University of Maryland as a David C. Driskell fellowship recipient. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States in venues such as, the U.S. Smithsonian National Botanic Garden, the Corcoran Museum of Art, Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Cornish College in Seattle, WA, Grounds for Sculpture, in Hamilton, NJ and numerous galleries, museums and colleges in upstate NY and the New England region.She has received numerous awards and grants, including the New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Grant, New York State Strategic Opportunity Stipend, Southeast College Art Association Award of Distinction, Ohio River Border Initiative Grant, International Sculpture Center/ Sculpture Magazine: Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture.
Teaching is tightly woven into Sherwood’s artistic practice. Non traditional teaching workshops include: Working with the Baylor Women’s Correctional Institution in Wilmington, DE with maximum-security inmates addressing issues of women's domestic spaces and non-traditional roles of women (sponsored by the NEA, the State of WV, and The Delaware Center for Contemporary Art). She has piloted programs with at-risk populations in Huntington, WV resulting in permanently installed site specific sculptures and in 2018 she completed a series of community based ceramic workshops in rural upstate NY. Currently, Sherwood is a co-coordinator for the Upstate NY chapter of The Feminist Art Project and the art teacher at The Robert C. Parker School, a progressive based Independent school outside of Albany NY.