Artist Profile Series: Sherry Kleinman

Sherry Kleinman
Pacific Palisades, California

1. What is sitting on the edges of your work table?  My computer and my sewing machine share my work table; surrounded by needles, pins, scissors, pieces of paper, and remnants of multiple recent projects.   I most often work on multiple projects at the same time.  Creative clutter is an apt descriptive word for my surroundings.

2. If someone looked beneath the surface, what could be revealed that we might not know about you?  I exchange postcards with people around the world (over 1000 sent and received) with Postcrossing.com for the past 7+ years.  I ask for art postcards.  I have acquired an amazing collection of artist’s cards.  What a mix I have in my collection, some well known paintings and others not; each an inspiration to me.

3. What occupies the space between your sewing machine and your cutting table?  The kitchen or my living room (depending on which circular path one takes in my house), as my machine is my studio and my cutting table is also my rarely used (for eating) formal dining room table.

4. What is the most exquisite moment in your artistic life?  Spending uninterrupted moments in my studio creating and completely losing track of time.

5. Do you have daily rituals in your studio?  No, I might have a goal in mind, but am flexible if I take a different path.  I like spontaneous moments and inspirations that happen unexpectedly.

6. Reflecting on the quilts that you have made, which one stands out to you?  Hard to pick one as each reflects where I was creatively at each given moment.  I found immense satisfaction creating My Family Tree quilt.  I had to assemble family names from both my and my husband’s families; have them printed onto fabric; create portraits of myself, my husband, and three daughters; and assemble into a finished quilt.  I have since created one for my oldest daughter with her husband’s family.  I plan to do two more, one for each of my other daughters.  It really creates a visual DNA with the hundreds of repeated names printed onto the fabric in a new and creative form.

7. What do you have an affinity for in your work?  I like colors and contrasting shapes and lines.

8. What kinds of patterns do you use in your work to create interest and texture? I like to add random hand seed stitches to my machine stitches which adds interest and dimension.

9. What personal iconography is identifiable to you exclusively in your work?  My use of iPad apps to recreate photos I have taken with drawn lines that are then machine and hand stitched.

10. What was your inspiration for the Best of Dinner at Eight?  I wanted to create something with personal meaning to me.  Seeing my 4 year old grand-daughter interact with my childhood doll Winnie “spoke” to me about the role of dolls, little girls, and imaginative play.  Having raised three daughters who are all now artists, I see this piece as a link that ties us all together creatively from our childhoods to adulthood.