Review: SVCC Art Gallery Welcomes Steve Sherrell

By Gracen Harmon

The SVCC Art Gallery hosted Chicago career painter Steve Sherrell’s Extraterrestrial from March 7th through April 5th.

Although the SVCC Art Department has shown several great exhibitions in the past, Steve Sherrell’s Extraterrestrial broughtnew and colorful scenery to the gallery walls. Lots of Sherrell’s work consists of an abstract aesthetic, but it also most definitely made you feel as though you were seeing something alien-like from the cosmos. Sherrell comments, “It is a concept series- the concept being the idea of things that are 'not of this world'.”

While observing Sherrell’s work, you could see that there is an obvious scheme among the exhibits: vivid colors and a mixture of geometric and organic shapes. Although there were no explicit titles or realistic aspects of the paintings, it forced us as the audience to use our imagination to discover what these pieces could possibly mean. 

Sherrell explains that, “This work is not political or social by nature. It is about the delight in being creative, the joy of not caring whether anyone 'gets it'. It is about the artist as free-agent, exploring the things that interest them. Because it is about things we have very little knowledge of, it allows me to be free.”

Although he was born in Indiana, Steve Sherrell is a career painter who is based in Chicago. He attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he achieved his Bachelors and Masters degrees in the Fine Arts. 

He is currently the Director of Exhibitions and Curator at Water Street Studios in Batavia, Illinois and founder of the Water Street Studios Artist's Collective. He also explored philosophy and realized that lots of it goes into the arts as a whole. His short biography for the gallery stated that his goal as an artist is to create art based on his inner dialogue while trying to keep it relevant with the current zeitgeist.