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Art
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Picture of Gary in the pit right after a firing
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Gary Sherman is a ceramic artist who leads workshops in creativity, self-awareness, and the use of intuitive states to facilitate self-expression. For a list of current classes being taught by Gary, visit www.creativeawareness.org.
Gary Sherman’s interest in art occurred in a very unusual way.
“One night in 1984, I had a very vivid dream. In this dream I had the sensation of flying above a large city. On top of one of the buildings I saw a man painting at an easel. As soon as I saw this I found myself moving down and into his experience of himself while painting. I experienced the great joy he was having while painting. I woke suddenly from the dream filled with this feeling.
“Two days later, while walking through the house, I discovered 25 lb. of clay that my wife had purchased some months before from a class she had taken. I felt compelled to pick it up and begin to work with it. I had no idea what to do but as I allowed my hands to lead me I became more intensely involved.
“For two months, every day as I came home from work I would immediately go to the clay and begin to sculpt. I produced three remarkable sculpted heads. They were all busts that were well beyond any artistic skill or sensibility that I had, each wonderfully alive and full of energy and strangely familiar to me. One was a European man that looked to belong to the seventeenth century, followed by a beautiful African woman, and a wise looking Asian man.”
  
“I knew, as I was doing it, that something extraordinary was happening. It wasn’t my interest that I was acting on but a deeply felt urge to allow my hands to express themselves through the clay. I was intensely involved, and at the same time a witness to a process that was unfolding before my eyes. As I began to view the product created through my hands, I knew this wasn’t the ‘me’ I was familiar with. By the time I had sculpted all three heads, I knew this was a continuation in the waking state of something that had transpired in the dream state with the artist.
“I was also aware that the heads I was sculpting were emotionally related to me, as was the artist in the dream. In some form they were my selves. What most amazed me about the whole experience was that an act that had taken form in the dream state had completed itself in my waking moments.”
Pictures of some of Gary's work
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Gary spent the next 10 years pursuing his interest in clay and studying under the guidance of various master potters. He became proficient at throwing on the potter’s wheel and sculpting using hand-building techniques.
In 2003 he was an artist-in-residence at the Mendocino Art Center in Mendocino, California, where for a year he worked and presented his art. He has been represented in galleries in New Mexico and California.
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For more information about Gary Sherman, review his biography.
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