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In 2006, Sheri went to Japan to study how the mikoshi functions as portable sculpture. For six months she travelled to dozens of festivals to see mikoshi construction and performance first hand. Although her intention was to understand the mikoshi, she became equally enthralled by getting ‘lost’ in towns and the conversations she had with strangers who stopped to talk with her.

The drawings below are hand drawn maps by two different gentlemen in Japan who were suggesting a route to get her un-lost. She collected many such drawings during her time there. They were always spontaneous responses to questions like “Where am I?” “What does this word mean?” “Where are you from?” “How are you related to…?”

Drawings like these record a conversation about a path. The lines map a route, but in reality they are divulging a subjective experience of landscape. They are chance encounters that come as a result of reaching a crossroads where words fail to express the spatial, hidden narratives of a location. Maps offer us the ability to translate spatial memory into a flat representation of time, movement, and orientation.

When we draw a map, we are ‘constructing’ our interior experience of personal and public landmarks. After the drawing leaves its context, it may appear to double for such things as building instructions, relational maps, strategies. The opportunities for [mis]interpretations are fantastically boundless --- this slippage being the basis of Sheri’s studio work.

Sheri plans to use the Youkobo Art Space residency as a time for gathering drawings (found and requested) and following them like construction blueprints from which to build sculptures. They will be built from found materials that are sourced from neighborhoods and consumer packaging. Each sculpture will be built to ‘function’ like a 3-D map that finds its meaningfulness by how it is used.

Sheri Simons was born in Detroit, Michigan and attended the University of Michigan (BFA) and Cranbrook Academy of Art (MFA). Her art has been shown nationally and internationally in shows that exhibit sound art, kinetics, mixed media, and installation. She has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Japan-US Friendship Commission, the Center for Cultural Innovation, and the California Arts Council. She is a professor in Sculpture at the California State University, Chico. Following her Youkobo residency, she will be continuing her research at Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik in Berlin for five months.

Date	2015.01.01 - 2015.01.31
Place	AIR-A
Website	http://www.sherisimons.com