Sherrye Lantz Art
Artist and Art Historian living in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Sherrye Lantz is an internationally known artist with works in private and public collections in the contiguous 48 states as well as Europe, Australia.. She has won numerous awards throughout her career for intaglio printmaking, drawing and painting. She was included in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Biennial of Prints and Drawing, exhibited in Virginia Celebrates Women in the Arts: Minds Wide Open, she received the 2010 YWCA Women of Achievement Award for Arts. She has exhibited in many group shows as well. With over 300 intaglio prints, 1000+ drawings and pastels, and who knows how many paintings, she also has a lifelong love of photography. Currently, she now turns her energies to painting and large graphite images using not pencils but rather large pieces of pure graphite manipulated into different shapes as her tools. Sherrye was the first woman awarded an MFA in studio art from Radford University, after her sojourn at the University of Florida in art history and conservation. As an undergrad she was an honors grad and a member of Phi Kappa Phi.
Sherrye is also the founder, only trained curator: studying under the former curator and restoration expert in the Greek and Roman departments of the MET She was also catalog editor of the Community Art Collection located at Virginia Western Community College, the largest permanently displayed collection of the artists of Southwestern Virginia. VWCC is where she also taught as Professor of Studio Art and Art History teaching intaglio printmaking, silkscreen, wood block printing, lithography, and life drawing. In Art History she taught the complete survey of Western Art, also developed and taught Survey of American Art from Pre-Columbian to the present, as well being among the first developers in distance learning (Art History), until her untimely disability in 1998. She also enjoyed a twenty year association with ‘Artemis: Artists and Writers from the Blue Ridge’ and served as technical advisor for the magazine’s last print copy in 2000, until 'Artemis' returned in 2014, under the direction of its founder, Jeri Rogers. Sherrye had both a poem, aptly entitled 'Artemis' and a graphite work included.
Ms. Lantz was one of the first to experience what is now loosely known as environmental toxicity. From 1998 until 2005, her world was about simply staying alive. Too many near death moments during that time period taught her much about life and living. Today she still lives with the effects. She says quite frankly it is and was her love of visual art that kept her going. Working in small sketch books, she recorded visual images of pain and near death moments. She has looked at these books only once since those years, saying ‘living through it was enough, recording it was tough, and looking back is rough.’
Today Sherrye devotes her time staying alive, art-making when possible, art history, and reading the world’s literature and history. She has adapted her studio to her physical limitations as did Frida Kahlo whose dairies provided inspiration and hope. When asked why she continues despite intense daily pain, she laughs with the answer, ‘I came this way.’ She has drawn since childhood and had a camera in her hands since she was three years old, the same age she began playing piano..
Her focus today is oil,acrylic, watercolor and large graphite images in an abstract manner, and of course her first love - printmaking. She draws her inspiration from things seen and things remembered filtered through her life experience. She sees that which many do not.
Elite Radio Network Intweview 2012
Sherrye Lantz is a visual artist and retired (disability) professor of studio art and art history in the state of Virginia. She is an expert in watercolor, acrylics, large graphite drawings, intaglio prints and photography. She attributes her success to her love of creation whether that be visual art, music, literature or poetry, often saying to friends, "I came this way." After her disability, it was her lifelong love of art that kept her going. Ms. Lantz is a retired professor of studio art and art history. She founded and curated the largest permanently displayed collection of the art of Southwestern Virginia, located at Virginia Western Community College. She shares her experiences with the Elite Radio Network.
Virginia, USA
