Sherry Parker

Master of the Universe
10″x8″; mixed media collage; 2022

Sherry Parker
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

STATEMENT

Sherry Parker’s work combines meticulous execution, edgy whimsy, flairs of surrealism, and witty imagination. She relies on CHANCE for her inspiration. “What excites me about the collage medium are the ideas that flow from chance: the serendipitous discovery of ‘found’ materials, the random (unconscious) selection process, the fortuitous mistakes, and the bringing together of disparate ephemera
and images to create curious connections out of chaos.

“Oxymoronically, I call this process ‘orchestrated chance’. CHANCE is my muse! My work reflects my playfully irreverent response to–or perhaps refuge from–the tumultuous times we live in. This can be seen in unexpected and surreal imagery, deconstruction and humanization of machines, and in anthropomorphic hybrids. My work is my way of re-envisioning and softening the world around me.”

BIO

Sherry Parker has been working in the collage medium since the early 80’s and has exhibited in galleries in New York, Santa Fe, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, Pasadena, Portland, and throughout northern California.

In 2018, Parker was invited to be one of 50 international collage artists featured in Rebeka Elizegi’s 225-page book, Collage by Woman: 50 Essential Contemporary Artists, published in Spain. Other recent collage-related accomplishments include, special effects/set design for a contemporary opera company in San Francisco, and a commission by Imagery Estate Winery, Kenwood, California, to design the label for their 2015 Cabernet Franc. In 2022, she was invited to show in a traveling exhibition themed “Migration” in Birr, Ireland and Warsaw, Poland.

Tragically, in October 2017, her home, studio, and all of her work were destroyed in the ravenous California firestorms. Grateful for the generosity of her first responder artist friends, Sherry soon accumulated enough tools and materials to create ten new collages enabling her to make her scheduled show at DZINE in San Francisco in March 2018. The following fall, she was given a solo show at the Foley Gallery in New York City. She has since made her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she has rebuilt her studio and her life.

Parker spent her business career in advertising and marketing research from which she retired in 2007 to pursue art full time. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Occidental College in Los Angeles and a graduate degree in French from the Université de Lausanne, Switzerland.

ARTIST CONTACT

[click to email]
www.sherryparkerart.com

IMAGES

The Proposal
10″x8″; mixed media collage; 2021
Thunder Bird
11.5″x7.5″; mixed media collage; 2022
a gift
10″x8″; mixed media collage; 2022