Sherry Markovitz was born in 1947, Chicago, Illinois. In 1969, she received her BA from the University of Wisconsin and moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington, where she earned her MFA in 1975.

In 2019, Markowitz was awarded the Yvonne Twining Humber Lifetime Achievement Award by Artist Trust.

In her professional career of 45 years, Markovitz has shown her work across the country in one-person and thematic exhibitions including a 1987 show with Seattle Art Museum, and a 1992 exhibition with the Mint Museum in North Carolina. Her large retrospective exhibition, organized by Washington State University, toured to the Bellevue Arts Museum and the Schneider Museum at Southern Oregon University in 2008.

Her work is in the permanent collections of Corning Museum of Glass, New York; Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA; John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI; Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Tacoma Art Museum; and the Seattle Art Museum, among other major museums.

Born in 1947 in Chicago, IL; resides in Seattle, WA

Education

1975 MFA Printmaking, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
1969 BA Ceramics and Art Education, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI

One Person Exhibitions
2020
Enclosures, Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA

2016
Time to Take a Walk, Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA

2013
Sculpture and Paintings, Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA

2012
Provenance: In Honor of Arlene Schnitzer, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR; curator Larry Fong (catalog)

Small Paintings, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

2010
Stories, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

2008
The True Story, Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA
Shimmer: Paintings and Sculptures, 1979-2007, Washington State University, Pullman, WA;
Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue, WA; Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR; curators Chris Bruce and Keith Wells, (book)

2003
Devotions, Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA (catalog)

2001
Throwing Voices, Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA

2000
Ochi Gallery, Ketchum, ID

1997
Form and Figure, Monique Knowlton Gallery, New York, NY

1995
Ochi Gallery, Ketchum, ID

1992-1993
ARTcurrents 10: Sherry Markovitz, Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, WA; curator Mark Leach (catalog)

1992
Life Forms, Linda Farris Gallery, Seattle, WA

1987
Documents Northwest: Sherry Markovitz, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; curator Vicki Halper (catalog)

1985
Bejeweled, Bedazzled Trophies, Monique Knowlton Gallery, New York, NY
U.S. Projects, From Dust to Dust and In Between, Artist’s Space, New York, NY; organized by Anne Focke (catalog)

1983
Easy Targets, Linda Farris Gallery, Seattle, WA

1981
Bucks and Does, Linda Farris Gallery, Seattle, WA

1979
Linda Farris Gallery, Seattle, WA

1977
Women: Body, Space and Personal Ritual, and/or Gallery, Seattle, WA; curator Lucy Lippard (catalog)

Selected Group Exhibitions

2022
OurBluePlanet: Global Visions of Water, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; curator Pam McClusky

2021
Christine Heindl, Sherry Markovitz, and James Sterling Pitt, Eli Ridgeway Gallery, Bozeman, MT

2017
Living with Art: The Newman Collection, 108 Contemporary, Tulsa, OK

2016
What’s New at TAM?, Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA

2014
In Passionate Pursuit, The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Collection and Legacy, Portland Art Museum, Portland, curator Bruce Guenther (catalog)

2013
Collecting Contemporary Glass, Corning Museum of Art, Corning, New York, Tina Oldknow (catalog)

Creating the New Northwest, Selections from the Lucy and Herb and Lucy Pruzan Collectiion, Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA (catalog) Rock Hushka

2012
Provenance: In Honor of Arlene Schnitzer, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR; curator Larry Fong (catalog)

Best of the Northwest, Selected Works from the Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA (catalog) Rock Hushka

Small Paintings, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

2011

Wild Kingdom, Texas State University, Austin, Texas; curator Mary Mikel Stump

Mars vs. Venus: Images of Male and Female, Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA

Seattle as Collector: Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs Turns 40, SAM Downtown Forum Gallery, Seattle, WA

2010-11
About Previews of Things to Come, Prographica, Seattle, WA

Animal Instinct: Allegory, Allusion, and Anthropomorphism. John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; curator Leslie Umberger

2010
The Art of Discovery: Celebrating 50 Years of Inspiring Young Minds Through The Junior League of Seattle’s Northwest Art Collection. Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, WA; curator Stefano Catalani (catalog)

Seattle Public Utilities Portable Works: Northwest Mid-Career Artists, Seattle Municipal Tower Gallery, Seattle, WA

Homage to the Artists, Ochi Gallery, Ketchum, ID

A Show of Hands, Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, WA; curator Barbara Matilsky (catalog)

Made in U.S.A., Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA

2009
Out of Bounds: Art from the collection of Driek and Michael Zirinsky, Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, WA; curator Barbara Matilsky (catalog)

The Bead Quiz, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; curator Pam McClusky

New Acquisitions, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; curator Michael Darling

The Toy Show II, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (catalog)

I.D.: Individual Demographics, Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA

2008
No Joke: Selections from the Pruzan Collection, Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner, WA; curator Vicki Halper

Good Doll Bad Doll, Armory Center for the Arts; Pasadena, CA; curator Michael Duncan.

Heads (dis)Embodied, Kirkland Arts Center, Seattle, WA; curator Jim McDonald (essay)

2007-2009
Contrasts: A Glass Primer, Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA; curator Vicki Halper (catalog)

2007
Drawing in the New Year: Exploring Memory and Ancestry at the Jewish New Year, Columbia City Gallery, Seattle, WA; curator Karen Kosoglad

2006
Made in Seattle, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; curator Susan Rothenberg

2005
Partners, Kirkland Arts Center, Kirkland, WA; curator Deborah Paine

2004
Transformed by Fire: Sculpture in Glass from the Collection of Jack and Becky Benaroya, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; curator Margery Aronson

Shakespeare as Muse, Schneider Museum of Art, Southern Oregon University, Ashland; curator Josine Ianco-Starrels

The Hunt: Ritual and Narrative, Sun Valley Center for the Arts, Ketchum, ID; curator Jennifer Gately

A Northwest Summer, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; curator Susan Rosenberg

2002
Imaging Cosmologies, Jacob Lawrence Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

2001
Northwest Masters: Selections from the City of Seattle Collection, City Space, Seattle, WA; curator Beth Sellars

2000-2001
Weird and Whimsical: Northwest Art from the Permanent Collection, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA

2000
½: Going Forward, Looking Back, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; curator Trevor Fairbrother and Chiyo Ishikawa

1997-2000
Pure Vision: American Bead Artists Exhibition, LSU Union Art Gallery, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, FL; Pensacola Museum of Art, FL; Boise Art Museum, ID; Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR; Irvine Fine Art Center, Irvine, CA; Perspective Gallery, Blacksburg, VA; Leedy-Voulkos Art Center and Gallery, Kansas City, MO; Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK; Lamont Gallery, Philips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH; Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL; Fuller Museum of Art, Brockton, MA; Islip Art Museum, East Islip, NY; Arts and Science Center for SE Arkansas, Pine Bluff, AR; Courthouse Galleries, Portsmouth, VA; Del Rio Council for the Arts, Del Rio, TX; curator Sherry Leedy and B. J. Shigaki. Support by Exhibits USA, (catalog, essay by Matthew Kangas)

1997
The Importance of Toys, Monique Knowlton Gallery, New York, NY

Seattle Collects Paintings, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; curator Trevor Fairbrother and Chiyo Ishikawa

Glass Today: American Studio Glass, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; curator Henry Hawler (catalog)

Collection Highlights: 1945 - Present, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; curator Trevor Fairbrother

1996
Family Matters, Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA (catalog)

1995
Contemporary Beads & Beadwork, Loveland Museum, Loveland, CO;

Beyond Tradition, Index Gallery, Clark College, Vancouver, WA; curator Marjorie Hirsh

Breaking Barriers, Portland Art Museum, OR; Madison Art Center, WI; Albany Museum of Art, GA; American Craft Museum, New York, NY; curator Matthew Kangas (catalog)

1994
Wildlife, California Center for the Arts, Escondido, CA; curator Reesey Shaw (catalog)

Pure Vision: American Bead Artists Exhibition, Rochester Art Center, Winona State University, MN; Leedy-Voulkos Gallery, Kansas City, MO

The Spirit of the Bead Ornamentation, Laumeier Sculpture Park, St Louis, MO

1993
The Shell Game: The Button as Craft, Octagon Center for the Arts, Ames, IA

Washington: Voices in Contemporary Sculpture, Bellevue Art Museum, WA

1992
Drawings by Sculptors, Linda Farris Gallery, Seattle, WA

1991
Syncretism, Alternative Museum, New York, NY; curator Geno Rodriguez (catalog)

Rodeo in Fact and Fiction, Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa, OK

1990
Views and Visions in the Pacific Northwest, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; curator Barbara Johns

New Work, Linda Farris Gallery, Seattle, WA

1989
2-D/3-D: Sculptor's Drawings, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; curator Vicki Halper

1988-1991
Structure and Surface: Beads in Contemporary American Art, Renwick Gallery, National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI (catalog by Mark Leach);

1988
Contemporary Survey: Visible Presence in the Northwest, Cheney Cowles Museum, Spokane, WA

1987-1990
The Eloquent Object, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Chicago Public Library Cultural Center, Chicago, IL; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA; Orlando Museum of Fine Arts, Orlando, FL; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan. Curators Marcia Manhart and Tom Manhart (catalog)

1987
Aspects of Drawing Part II: Representation, The Public Art Space, Seattle, WA

Standing Ground: Sculpture by American Women, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH (catalog); curator Sarah Roberts-Lafferty (catalog)

The Bead Goes On: Expressions in Contemporary Beadwork, Maude Kearns Art Center, Eugene, OR (catalog)

The Ubiquitous Bead, Bellevue Art Museum, WA; curator Ramona Solberg

1986-1988
Third Western States Biennial, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; New Orleans Contemporary Art Center; Colorado Springs Fine Art Center; San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX; Yellowstone Art Center, Billings, MT; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; curator Charlotta Kotik (catalog)

1986
Northwest Impressions: Works on Paper, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

1985
American Women in Art: Works on Paper, U.N. Conference on Women, Nairobi, Kenya; curator Cynthia Navaretta (catalog)

1984
Strange, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA; curator Chris Bruce (catalog)

Seattle Artists, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, BC, Canada

Surface, Material, Structure, Hodges/Banks Gallery, Seattle, WA

1983
Self-Portraits, Linda Farris Gallery, Seattle, WA; Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (catalog, essay by Peter Frank)

Bumberbiennale: Art Since ‘Century 21’ 1963-83, Seattle Center, Seattle, WA; curator Matthew Kangas

The American Artist as Printmaker, 23rd National Print Exhibition, Brooklyn Museum, NY; curator Barry Walker (catalog)

Group Show, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID

Seattle Artists, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA

Pacific Northwest Today, Brentwood Gallery, St Louis, MO

1982
State of the Arts, Northwest Artists Workshop, Portland, OR

Fountain Fine Arts Gallery, Portland, OR

Curated by Linda Farris, Blackfish Gallery, Portland, OR

Urban Vernacular, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

Animal Imagery, Sebastian Moore Gallery, Denver, CO

Washington Printmakers, Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA

Windfall Press Project, Linda Farris Gallery, Seattle, WA

1981
Big Paintings, Linda Farris Gallery, Seattle, WA

Portopia '81, King County Arts Commission, Seattle, WA; Kobe, Japan; curator Richard Andrews

Seattle Drawings, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA

The Farm Project, Arlington, WA

Women Artists from Seattle, Spokane, WA

Big Paintings, Linda Farris Gallery, Seattle, WA

Martyrdumb Roscoe Louie Gallery, Seattle, WA

1980
Contemporary Washington State Artists, Cranberry Galleries, Ocean Spray Cranberry, Plymouth, MA

Raconteur: A Private View, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA; curator Chris Bruce

1979
19 from 1979, Linda Farris Gallery, Seattle, WA (catalog)

Selections from the City's Collection, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA

Cornish Faculty, Institute for Pedagogical Studies, Vladivostok, USSR

1977-1978
Women: Body, Space and Personal Ritual, and/or Gallery, Seattle, WA (catalog)

Awards, Grants and Commissions

2019 Yvonne Humber, Award for women over 60, Artist Trust, Seattle, WA 2004 Fellowship, Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission, Seattle, WA

Illustration, Artsfund Sixteenth Annual Poster Award, Seattle, WA

1990 Seattle Artists Grant, Seattle Arts Commission, Seattle, WA

1981 Special Projects Grant, and/or Gallery, Seattle, WA

1979 Grant for painting, Washington Honors Program, Washington State Arts Commission 1977 Northwest Projects Grant, and/or Gallery, Seattle, WA

1975-79 Artist Consultant for Viewlands Substation Project, Seattle Arts Commission, One Percent for Art program

Collections

Bank of America, Seattle, WA
The Corning Museum of Glass, New York, NY
Dow Jones Collection, New York, NY
Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Junior League, Seattle, WA
John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI
Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA
Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC
Museum of Arts and Design, (formerly American Craft Museum), New York, NY
Progressive Insurance, Mayfield Village, OH
City of Seattle, Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, Seattle, WA
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA
Seattle City Light One Percent for Art Collection, Seattle, WA
Sheraton Hotel, Seattle, WA
Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA
University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle, WA
Washington Art Consortium: Works on Paper Collection, Bellingham, WA

June 3, 2019
Artist Trust
“Artist Trust Announces 2019 Twining Humber & SOLA Awards”

June 2, 2016
The Stranger
“Alert! Art Art Art Art Art. (Tonight's First Thursday in Pioneer Square)”
by Jen Graves

June 6, 2016
Sherry Markovitz, "Time to Take a Walk"
by AMANDA MANITACH

May 28, 2013
Seattle Met
“The Yin and Yang of Twenty-First Century Masters”
by Sheila Farr

May 23, 2008
The Seattle Times
“Sherry Markovitz: ‘Animating the inanimate’ through distinctive art”
by Sheila Farr

Artist Sherry Markovitz felt moved by the story of Mary Todd Lincoln, one of the saddest women in American history. Mary suffered the death of a child and terrible bouts of depression, which she fended off with compulsive shopping and hoarding. She was at her husband's side at Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865, when he was shot in the head at close range. Eventually, Mary died in a mental institution, her mind in turmoil.

Markovitz resurrected Mary, and her love of finery, in a dress of transcendent beauty — a starburst of beads, feathers, flowers, shells, buttons, bangles and fetishes. In this sculptural portrait, the dress is the woman: a vivid mosaic of her frantic needs and the ineffectual accumulation of pretty things she bulwarked against them. The dress stands resplendent, its wearer's outstretched arms perpetually empty. Where the head should be, Markovitz placed a soft cluster of flowers, which she calls "the wilting brain."

Portraiture lies at the heart of Markovitz's artwork, now spotlighted in two solo exhibitions: Sherry Markovitz: Shimmer. Paintings and Sculptures 1979-2007, which opened Thursday at Bellevue Arts Museum, and The True Story at Greg Kucera Gallery in Pioneer Square. Markovitz is best known for the opulently beaded surfaces of her exquisite dolls and trophylike animal heads, and for her spare, evocative paintings. Although she seldom aims to portray a specific person, Markovitz says the figures are a way of getting at an essential truth, of "animating the inanimate." Beauty always plays a star role in the work and adds to the ritualist power of the sculptures.

In the mid-1970s, when Markovitz was in graduate school, minimalism and abstract art were ruling forces. If there was pressure to conform, she didn't notice it. "I was never influenced by the [contemporary] art world," she said earlier this week while installing her BAM retrospective. "My interest has always been in ethnic art, folk art, tribal art, Native American art." For her palette, she scoured flea markets and thrift stores, amassing vintage froufrous, bits of lace, antique dolls, dresses and loads of small shiny objects.

Though she was careful to steer clear of the standard flower, bead and feather hippie aesthetic of the period, Markovitz never had to struggle to find a distinctive way of expressing herself. "I always tried to do what I want to do. I was pretty fierce about that,"Markovitz says. "I was born with a voice. It was always there." That originality brought prompt attention to Markovitz when she began showing at the former Linda Farris Gallery in 1979. In 1985, she had her first shows in New York. Initially, Markovitz says she found the reviews and acclaim awkward: "I'm basically shy."

She first got interested in painting at the age of 8, while attending Hebrew school in Chicago. Her teacher, Sonia Zaks, was a Lithuanian Holocaust survivor who later became a prominent Chicago art dealer. Markovitz remembers visiting Zaks' apartment with her mother and seeing "a real art collection."

By the time she was 14, Markovitz had figured out she not only wanted to make art, but that she needed to. "At some point, my adolescent love experience got too intense," she recalled. "Somehow I figured out it wasn't going to come from another person. ... I needed something that no other person would be able to fulfill. That's where the beadwork comes in. It's soothing."

After graduating from the University of Wisconsin in ceramics and art education, Markovitz went on to the University of Washington. There she met fellow art student Peter Millett, now a prominent Seattle sculptor. They both came from Chicago and discovered common likes in art &emdash; though you wouldn't necessarily know it by looking at theirs. Millett's sculptures are abstract and unembellished, while Markovitz's are typically ornate and figurative. "We see things similarly. We do things differently," Markovitz says.

The two have been married for 28 years and have a son, Jacob, who is now at the University of California, Santa Cruz. And yes: He is studying art.

Recently, Markovitz began a series of paintings on unstretched silk, which you can see both at the BAM show and at Kucera. They are simple, ghostly images that hang loose on the wall, gently rippling — perfect counterpoints to the lavish, static sculptures. "I like the freedom these allow, and I like the concentration these allow," the artist says. "There are touches of the paintings in the sculpture and the sculpture in the paintings."

"Sherry Markovitz: Shimmer. Paintings and Sculptures" was organized by Chris Bruce for the Museum of Art at Washington State University in Pullman and will also travel to the Schneider Museum of Art in Ashland, Ore. "I'm happy for the achievement," says Markovitz, 60. "It's a note. It's a big note — but not the final note."

April 6, 2001
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Markovitz's Dolls Tell More Than A Toy Story”
by Regina Hackett

The delicacy of dolls is a collective delusion. Unless battered or too ardently loved, they remain robustly new, even after the children who once treasured them have grown up, grown old and died.

Dust may cover dolls in closets, but age cannot wither them, which is part of what makes Sherry Markovitz's paintings of dolls at the Greg Kucera Gallery so compelling.

Like us, her dolls appear to be subject to change. Like us, they seem to have become timid or coarse, radiant or shallow. As projections of our natures, they serve as the emotional equivalent of ventriloquists' dummies. Hence, the show's title, "Throwing Voices."

Seattle's Markovitz hasn't exhibited in Seattle in nearly a decade, although she has continued to show elsewhere, including New York and Los Angeles. In Seattle, she is best known for her beaded animal heads that also are painted and may be festooned with buttons, feathers, fake pearls; shells, sequins, glass hearts and artificial flowers. She also is famed for the blizzard of similar materials encrusting the three-dimensional bodies of dolls, parts of dolls and gourds.

From the queen of ornament, these paintings in watercolor, gouache, pencil, ink and egg tempera on paper might come as a shock, because they are rigorously spare. While her sculptures anchor the present moment with blunt grace, the figures in her paintings float free on cloudy mixtures of memory.

Some push forward to achieve specific detail, while others recede into semi-erasure.

The "Three Graces" (36 inches high by 47 inches wide) look as if they are barely out of childhood. Inside their permanent youth, these ash-blue and peach-colored girls are strangely aged. They project the air of shaky old women who fear falling. To cushion them against this possibility, Markovitz gave them a cloud of white cotton to lean against, and yet none of them do, maintaining instead a stiff verticality. Above them, a white rabbit, symbol of enlightenment, dozes fitfully as blue streaked with pale gold makes a sky and invites all these figures who are paying no attention to star in it.

"Family" (36 inches high by 45 inches wide) features a vivid little doll head in the lower left corner. Innocent as she looks, her dreams produce monsters: the three lurching id figures hanging above her. "Family" is a painting about consciousness folded the wrong way and buckling out of place -- the good girl going against the grain for the fierce pleasure of causing trouble.

"Mexican Purple" (36 inches high by 52 inches wide) is a luminous shade, eroded into barely colored light. In it, three dolls' heads make an odd, irregular triangle. In their self-absorption, they are unaware of the pale force field of color connecting them and also unaware of the leering form on the lower right. It's a puddle face, melted or stripped to its essence. Having devoured one girl (leaving only a pair of black braids), it rests before taking on her sisters.

In figurative paintings, rhythm unlocks character. For Markovitz, rhythm is character. The Mortimer of "Mortimer and Friends" (42 inches high by 54 1/2 inches wide) is fast, loose and out of control. Taking no pains with his appearance, he is surrounded by dolls that are all appearance -- tight as tics or disappearing into despair. He's a dandy of detachment, Eustace Tilley on the skids. They're past their prime and taking their lost looks to heart. Their sorrow and his sloppy wit are counterpoint harmonies for a rich and sour tune.

"Mary Todd" is a toddler-size doll with faded cloth flowers instead of a head, the only sculpture in the exhibit. Its presence helps mark the boundaries of Markovitz's aesthetic concerns, and shows how closely they are related. Both encrusted sculpture and lean painting give form to feeling, projecting voices that are seen instead of heard.

Critic John Russell once observed that Cubism was the watershed art movement of the 20th century. Now that the century's over, it's easy to see that he was wrong. There was no watershed movement, but the closest thing to it was Surrealism. It is the soil for everything from Abstract and Neo-Expressionism to Pop and even some forms of Minimalism, from Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol to Bruce Nauman, David Hammons and Kiki Smith. Markovitz's work is more evidence, if more were needed, of how rich a vein that early 20th-century form remains.

April 5, 2001
Seattle Times
“Visual Arts April gallery walk features Markovitz by Sheila Farr”
by Sheila Farr

Sherry Markovitz fans get a special treat - a show of her new paintings at the Greg Kucera Gallery. This is the artist's first show in her hometown since 1992. Best known here for her iconic, beaded animal heads, Markovitz has bypassed the Seattle scene for New York in recent years. Now she's back, and these new paintings should prove to be as intriguing and disconcerting as the earlier work.

Markovitz paints on paper with various water-based media, and the imagery grows out of her fascination with dolls, masks, dummies and assorted stuffed animals. She says that the paintings, based on what she refers to as collective memory, "came out of a sense of urgency, as a dream poking through the unconscious to deliver a message. ... It is important that these works not be nostalgic or sentimental, yet offer a departure point for all of us to remember as we face the future."

In 1999, Seattle artist Sherry Markovitz began a series of works on paper, some smaller, but most around 3 x 4 feet in size. These paintings are created with various gouache, egg-tempera and water-based paints on translucent architectural drafting paper cut from a roll.

The imagery is derived from the artist’s own ongoing collection of dolls, dummies, masks, figurines and stuffed animals. Most of these are personal symbols for Markovitz, but their familiar iconography help make the work accessible to most viewers while still resisting specific meaning. This body of work exhibits Markovitz’s prescient ability for tapping into archetypal images of childhood dreams, fears and desires that may still be manifest in our adult lives.

Viewed as supplements to the figure, Markovitz uses clothing, body adornment, costumes and masks to question how we construct images of the self. For example, an image of a wedding dress doesn’t simply mark the occasion, it may also question the transition to womanhood it supposedly represents. That the wedding dress can easily be confused with a doll’s clothing only helps to complicate the issue and make it a richer visual experience.

Sherry Markovitz was born in 1947 in Chicago, Illinois. She received her BA in Ceramics and Art Education from the University of Wisconsin, and her MFA in Printmaking from the University of Washington. Her work is in the permanent collections of The American Craft Museum, New York; The Corning Museum of Glass, New York; Dow Jones Collection, New York; Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina; and The Seattle Art Museum, Seattle.

Enclosures, 2020 - Interview with the artist about GIVE AND TAKE

Enclosures, 2020 -Interview with the artist about HORIZON

Sherry Markovitz, 1980 - 1989 - Interview with Dan Murphy on Channel 7

Shimmer: Paintings and Sculptures, 1979-2007
Traveling exhibition beginning with Washington State University, Pullman, WA; Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue, WA; Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR
Exhibition curators: Chris Bruce and Keith Wells

Shimmer is a 120 page hardbound book with an essay by Josine Ianco-Starrels.
Availalable for sale in the gallery for $30

Time To Take A Walk, 2016