Interview with Sharon Norwood
Update July 16, 2020: Due to unforeseen circumstances, Sharon's visit to Erie and residency are postponed until late summer or early fall. We will update this post and our social media accounts when we have the dates set!
Erie Arts & Culture is thrilled to announce that the agency will welcome Savannah, Georgia-based artist Sharon Norwood as the next visiting artist in residence.
Sharon Norwood is an interdisciplinary Artist whose work spans several media to include painting and ceramic. Norwood is a graduate from Florida State University with an MFA in studio Art, and a BFA in Painting from the University of South Florida. Her work has been exhibited in several Biennials including the Jamaica, Atlanta and Florida Biennial. Her exhibition record includes Florida, Georgia, Baltimore, Kansas City, Washington, New York, Canada, South Korea, Jamaica and Germany. Norwood is the recipient of numerous honors including the Exceptional Opportunity Award, the Andy McLaughlin Memorial Award and the Jim Boone Endowed Art Scholarship from Florida State University.
In 2016 Norwood received the Raymond James Gasparilla Festival of the art’s emerging artist recognition and the Creative Loafing Tampa Bay’s Best of the Bay Emerging Artist recognition. She has participated in national and international residencies including the Vermont Studio Center (VSC), PILOTENKUECHE, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, ROKTOWA and the
Jacque and Natasha Gellman Fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). Sharon maintains her studio practice in Savannah Georgia.
Sharon's Artist Statement:
My work often deals with issues of identity where I use the line as a way to explore complex relationships. My aim is to create works that challenge our passive ways of looking. The subject of my work comes from my own narrative with social, political and cultural content. I am interested in creating a dialogue that speak in nuanced ways to issues of race, gender, beauty and class. In my work the curly line takes on special importance. The curly line at times becomes a metaphor for the black body, and at other times it lives within the decorative, ornate language that connects us all back to the formal language of drawing and assertions about beauty. I enjoy the shift between hair and line, how at one moment the work is read as hair while at other times it is simply a beautiful mark.
