"Kerplunk, 2008" Sculpture

Midwest, 1967 - currently residing in rural Tennessee, United States

Sher Fick holds a BFA Painting/Sculpture (2006) from Middle Tennessee State University and has studied at the Santa Fe College of Art and The Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. While living in the Florida Panhandle, Fick was nominated for the Cox/Bravo Channels Champion for the Arts Award. Fick's work explores personal and cultural archeology. Motifs include childhood remnants and found objects, safety pins and disassembled doll parts. Materials utilized include mixed media assemblages with encaustic, altered garments, and fiber constructions. Art Critic David Maddox found Ficks work dealing with childhood and domestic matters handled in . . . a pleasurably lively manner and that the materials were arranged in a . . . ceremonial and ritualistic way.

In recent series I wanted to explore and question the roles of women and women artists. In the last decades artists have been allowed to move beyond the gentle arts of needlepoint and watercolor, allowing for a more aggressive and passionate expression. As an artist, I never identified myself as a feminist. My being female was just a part of my biology, driving my sexual encounters and relations and the cause of reproduction. All of these feminist identifiers caused ambiguity within me. Constriction, restraint, feelings of abuse, and invisibility were the products of my femininity. In no way was I called to wave the feminist banner. I did not want someone to give me credit for or look at my art only through the pink lenses of feminism. I feel art should stand on its own as to content and visual principles of design. Does the viewer really need to know that a female created a work? So for years I de-feminized my subject matter, colors, and construction. I was going for an androgynous art.

Unfortunately, this separatist attitude developed into a denial of my complete person. I AM a woman. I AM a wife. I AM a mother. I loved playing with dolls as a child. I love to sew and crochet. As I began an archeological dig culturally, psychologically, and personally in my recent Excavations and Explorations series, I re-discovered and acknowledged - for the first time - my feminine history and existence.