Coleen Sterritt (born 1953) is an American sculptor known for abstracted, hybrid works made from a myriad of everyday objects and materials, combined in unexpected ways.Mallinson, Constance. "Between: Recent Sculpture of Coleen Sterritt," Coleen Sterritt: Between, Turlock, CA: CSU Stanislaus, University Art Gallery, 2009.Pagel, David. "Coleen Sterritt's 'Torque' rebels subtle ways," Los Angeles Times, December 20, 2013.Johnson, Cooper. "Tipping Equilibrium: Building an Aesthetic from the Contradictions of Organic and Geometric Form," Coleen Sterritt: 1977–2017, Santa Monica, CA: Griffith Moon, 2018. Retrieved November 14, 2018. Writers root her work in the tradition of post-minimalists Jackie Winsor, Eva Hesse and Nancy Graves, and assemblage artists such as Louise Nevelson, Robert Rauschenberg and Marisa Merz; she is sometimes associated with contemporaries Jessica Stockholder, Nancy Rubins, and Tony Cragg.Klonarides, Carole Ann. "Still Point: Coleen Sterritt — Sculpture (2011-17)," Coleen Sterritt: 1977–2017, Santa Monica, CA: Griffith Moon, 2018. Retrieved November 14, 2018.Frank, Peter and Andi Campognone, Andi. Curators’ Statement, Coleen Sterritt: Stuck to the World, Riverside, CA: Riverside Art Museum, 2006. Sculpture critic Kay Whitney suggests Sterritt's work "expands and reinterprets three of the most important artistic inventions of the 20th Century—collage, abstraction and the readymade"— in play with the traditions of Arte Povera bricolage and Surrealist psychological displacement. Curator Andi Campognone considers Sterritt one of the most influential post-1970s artists in establishing "the Los Angeles aesthetic" in contemporary sculpture,Campognone, Andi. Introduction. Coleen Sterritt: 1977–2017, Santa Monica, CA: Griffith Moon, 2018. Retrieved November 14, 2018. while others identify her as an inspiration for later West Coast artists creating hand-made, free-standing sculpture counter to trends toward interventions, public art and environmental works.Spaid, Sue. "Still Standing (After Balancing En Pointe for Nearly Four Decades)," Coleen Sterritt, Santa Monica, CA: Griffith Moon, 2018. Retrieved November 14, 2018. Constance Mallinson writes that Sterritt's work "walks a line between charm and threat, the natural, the industrial and the hand fabricated, rejecting easy associations for complex reads." Los Angeles Times critic David Pagel calls it smart, funky and "subtly rebellious" in its refashioning of discarded material, dumpster finds, and art-historical lineages.
Sterritt has exhibited throughout the United States, in Japan, Spain, Kenya and South Africa, and in major shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE),Hugo, Joan. "Six Downtown Sculptors", Artweek, April 21, 1979. Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (LAICA), and Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery,Korten, Noel. Natural Forces in Los Angeles Sculpture, Los Angeles: Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Park, 1990. among many venues. In 2016, she was named a John Simon Guggenheim Fine Arts Fellowship recipient.John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Coleen Sterritt, Fellows. Retrieved November 14, 2018. Sterritt's work is featured in several public art collections and the books American Women Sculptors: A History of Women Working in Three DimensionsRubinstein, Charlotte Streifer. American Women Sculptors: A History of Women Working in Three Dimension, Boston: G.K. Hall and Co., 1990. and L.A. Rising: SoCal Artists Before 1980.Kienholz, Lyn. L.A. Rising: SoCal Artists Before 1980, The California/International Arts Foundation, 2010. In 2018, Griffith Moon published the retrospective catalogue, Coleen Sterritt: 1977–2017, in collaboration with the Lancaster Museum of Art and History (MOAH).Griffith Moon Publishing. Coleen Sterritt: 1977–2017, Santa Monica, CA: Griffith Moon, 2018. Retrieved November 14, 2018. Sterritt is based in the Los Angeles area.
Life and career Sterritt was born in Morris, Illinois in 1953 and grew up in Chicago. Her early influences were her grandmother, Dorothy Button, a well-known local gardener and her uncle, James A. Sterritt, a sculptor and educator, who co-founded the 1960s casting conferences at the University of Kansas that later became the International Sculpture Center.Botello, Rochelle. "Space, Materiality and the Pursuit of the Poetic in the Everyday: A conversation with Coleen Sterritt and Rochelle Botello," Coleen Sterritt: 1977–2017, Santa Monica, CA: Griffith Moon, 2018. Retrieved November 14, 2018. Sterritt studied at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (BFA, 1976), where she created sculpture influenced by Jackie Winsor, Eva Hesse, and feminist theory. In 1977, she moved to Los Angeles to attend Otis Art Institute (MFA, 1979), where she studied with Betye Saar and Germano Celant, and was introduced to the work of Arte Povera and the California assemblage artists.
In 1979, Sterritt rented a large studio in a deserted Los Angeles industrial building, helping to pioneer a burgeoning downtown art scene.Hammond, Pamela. "Coleen Sterritt: New Expressionism," Images & Issues, March–April 1984, p.29–31.Drohojowska, Hunter. "Urban Art", L.A. Weekly, May 22, 1981, p. 6–8. Retrieved November 14, 2018. She also worked at the newly opened Al's Bar, a key cultural hub of the time. As a woman sculptor whose work ran counter to the era's dominant, almost exclusively male, Minimalist aesthetic, Sterritt embraced the openness of the Los Angeles scene, which was less burdened by male-dominated history and mainstream orthodoxies, exhibiting at museums, non-profit spaces, and the prominent Ulrike Kantor Gallery. She was featured in several notable exhibits, including "Six Downtown Sculptors" (LACE, 1979), "Downtown L.A. in Santa Barbara" (1980), "Southern California Artists" (LAICA, 1981, curated by Barbara Haskell),Wilson, William. "Toward a Definition of Post-Modernism," Los Angeles Times, February 1, 1981. and "Natural Forces in Los Angeles Art" (1990).
After losing her studio space in late 1991, Sterritt lived in Ireland for six months and focused solely on drawing through 1993. She spent six months in New Mexico after receiving a Roswell Artist-in-Residence award in 1994;The Roswell Artist in Residence Foundation. RAiR Alumni. Retrieved November 14, 2018. the two experiences significantly influenced the direction of her work.Register, Kathy. "’Drawn from L.A.’ highlights work of more than 40 area artists," San Gabriel Valley Tribune, May 1996. She has since had solo exhibitions at the Riverside Art Museum (2006),Couzens, Julia. "Stuck to the World: The Art of Coleen Sterritt," Coleen Sterritt: Stuck to the World, Riverside, CA: Riverside Art Museum, 2006. the galleries d.e.n. contemporary (2006) and Another Year in LA (2014),Another Year in LA. Coleen Sterritt– TORQUE, 2014. Retrieved November 14, 2018. MOAH (2016), and several university venues.California State University, Stanislaus. Coleen Sterritt, The Art Galleries. Retrieved November 14, 2018.Childs, Carrie. Coleen Sterritt: Up, Claremont Graduate University, 1996.
Work Like her individual works, which begin with materials or found objects and develop out of intuitive choices and processes and chance, Sterritt's overall body of work has evolved organically. Writers have characterized her art as a search for harmony between opposed formal, physical and psychological properties: organic and geometric, contained and expressive, natural and human-made, stable and unstable, rugged and delicate, independent and interdependent.Hugo, Joan. "Coleen Sterritt," Critics Choice: Downtown Artists, Los Angeles: TransAmerica Center, 1984. While her work is nonrepresentational and grounded in formal issues of line, plane, shape, space and form, she subverts that with an improvisational mingling of found, fabricated and natural materials gleaned from studio detritus, recycling bins, and construction dumpsters that smuggle in diverse references and elusive narratives and metaphors. In visual terms, critics most often note her striking compositions that seem to threaten collapse, "virtuoso acrobatic performance" evoking movement, gesture and awkward equilibrium,Frank, Peter. "Haiku Reviews" Huffington Post, December 5, 2011. Retrieved November 14, 2018. and eclectic tactile effects.Gardner, Colin. "Art Throughout the City: Coleen Sterritt," L.A. Reader, October 26, 1984.
Early sculpture: 1978–1995 Sterritt first gained notice for tripodal, hut-like structures made of industrial and natural materials, such as yucca stalk legs, upon which she balanced river rocks (e.g., Loose Shorts, 1978).Knight, Christopher. "When Sculpture Goes Public", Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Dec. 14, 1980.Pincus, Robert, "The Galleries," Los Angeles Times, June 15, 1984. Over the next decade, critics such as Joan Hugo and Peter Frank suggest her formal vocabulary and command of materials grew,Frank, Peter. "L.A. Art Seen", Review, L.A. Weekly, January 29, 1988. her forms evolving to include stick-impaled, tar-covered pyramidal forms, and later, vessel-like biomorphic forms sprouting appendages.Wolf, Leslie. "Coleen Sterritt at Karl Bornstein Gallery," L.A. Weekly, June 22, 1984. They described works such as Noche a Noche (1981)Coleen Sterritt website. Noche a Noche 1981, Selected Archive. Retrieved November 15, 2018. or O.W.W.I.H. (1984)Coleen Sterritt website. O.W.W.I.H., 1984, Selected Archive. Retrieved November 15, 2018. as "ominous, yet vulnerable," "fascinating and terrifying"Lugo, Mark. "Nairobi 95: Sculpture by Coleen Sterritt," San Diego Tribune, September 9, 1983.—alien plants or creatures, whose assertive physicality (mandible, tooth, thorn, and quill-like forms) evoked both allure and aggression.Hugo, Joan. "Ambiguous Presences," Artweek, February 6, 1982.Drohojowska, Hunter. "Young Turks", Artforum, February 1982. Retrieved November 14, 2018. Several writers trace that ambiguity to seemingly incompatible impulses: a "strangely primal, poetic urge" to infuse her economical formal language with the energy of totemic ritual and mystery, a contemporary, punk-like angst, and an eccentric, postmodern humor.Gardner, Colin. "The Galleries", Los Angeles Times, January 24, 1986.
In the later 1980s, Sterritt shifted toward work with smoother surfaces and restrained color, that some writers compare favorably to the work of Martin Puryear or Louise Bourgeois. She also undertook greater compositional challenges and expression of movement, that critic Colin Gardner wrote "synthesized classical balance with rugged, idiosyncratic kinesis," such as Full Quintet (1985), Endear (1987), or Pike: For Earl the PearlColeen Sterritt website. Pike: For Earl the Pearl, 1988, Selected Archive. Retrieved November 15, 2018. (1988).Clothier, Peter. "Coleen Sterritt at Karl Bornstein Gallery," L.A. Weekly, January 31, 1986. Others recognized greater psychological tenderness and a "quasi-humorous pathos" in her ungainly, "lovable ugly ducklings," such as the swan-like Flush (1991), which features two forms in relation to explore issues of sexuality and desire, including separation and union, embrace and entrapment.Donohue, Marlena. "Sculpture Taking Its Lyrical Ease Beyond Gender in ‘Raw Grace,’" Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1988.
Sculpture: 1995–Present