Sheri Simons    Bio

Artist Statement

I have been building structures that employ two physical attributes that are undesirable when combined: largeness and delicacy. Searching for the extremes in each of these, I apply ancient engineering strategies such as tensioning and mutual force to construct kinetic and aural sculptures. In order for them to survive, they must be stressed, thereby distributing weaknesses throughout the entire structure. I strive to make my work teeter on the edge of [im]possibility while bringing with it an elegant tension between ephemera and potential collapse. The impracticality of these characteristics appeals to a fascination with an endeaaring sense of doom.

I work with sound as a non-visual relative of the work. I use it as a record of something that is happening to an object, not as a background, nor end product. I script it to capitalize on sound’s abilities to stage the drama of a moment unfurling.

In particular, I am looking at the mechanics of transference whereby a moment is made into a memory. Our brain performs an involuntary overwriting service as it records an event. It can modify an actual event that is outside its frame of reference to fit within its reality and store it as an adjustable memory without consulting the conscious mind. In this way, the exactness of perception is a moot point. Of greater importance to an individual is that a moment has been filled, a memory was formed and a life is perceived as having gone on seamlessly. Whether this is innocence, survival, or ignorance, we nonetheless submit to the repeating slippage of seeing/not seeing and get on with a shade of daily blindness. I am working with scripting this sensation, this elegant, elastic connection with what we regard as having happened.

Sheri Simons
dis place
Wood, hardware
96 x 288 x 84 inches

Sheri Simons
Sayonara
Wood, sound, train
288 x 360 x 720 inches

Sheri SImons
Smudge
Wood, steel, motor, electronic sound circuits, strain gauges, speakers
192 x 192 x 60 inches

Sheri SImons
Theatre of the Absorbed
Bronze
84 x 168 x 144 inches