Former Fairhaven College professor, Tom Sherwood, penciled drawings and paintings from the past 50 years covered the walls of the Lightcatcher at Whatcom Museum.
Around 100 people from the Bellingham area came to the showing of the 78-year-old artist's work on the morning of May 14.
The gallery show was organized and put together by friends and former students of Sherwood’s who owned paintings that were given or sold to them by Sherwood.
“I think this show is a result of my friends beating up on me,” Sherwood said.
According to long-time friend and former student Tom Wood, 63, said it took nearly three years to put this event together to give Sherwood’s art the attention he thinks it deserves. It was also the first time Sherwood had seen all his work together in the same room, Sherwood said.
“Tom didn’t want to be bothered, so I went to Tom and said, ‘What’s that about?’ and he goes, ‘Well it’s just so much trouble and I don’t want to bother my friends with it. I don’t want to deal with it I just want to do my work, its too complicated,’” Wood said. “So I went to the museum and said don’t contact Tom about the show anymore and I spearheaded the show.” [Tom, 5:00]
During presentation of the event Sherwood explained how he created some of his art pieces and explained that many of his pieces he has been working on for his whole life as an artist.
Sherwood explained how he molded the gold borders of his paintings by hand using a shark’s tooth he found on the beach. It took him two years to create the gold border of one of his favorite pieces.
Another one of his paintings, which depicted a nude woman lying down over a city-like display of ancient to modern architecture, Sherwood made use of artistic element called a vanishing point, which is basically a horizon point of a painting to give perspective of depth to a two dimensional piece of art.
The vanishing point of that particular painting ended in the nude woman’s “crotch” which Sherwood said was intentional to make the viewer uncomfortable.
Former student Rob Burton, 65, had Sherwood as his advisor back when he attended Fairhaven College. Sherwood used to host parties at his home back then for his students and friend to have discussions about art among other subjects, which Burton would sometimes attend as well as Wood. [Burton, 1:00]
“We became good friends, I was doing a lot of photography of that time and took some portraits of his family,” Burton said. “So I got to know him through that way.”
Sherwood’s art will continue to be displayed in Whatcom Museum’s Lightcatcher gallery until June 14, 2015.
