Animating the inanimate through distinctive art
Artist Sherry Markovitz displays ornate beadwork, evocative paintings and scultures at art exhibit "Sherry Markovitz: Shimmer. Paintings and Sculptures 1979-2007"
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 recently 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 -- 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."
