Introducing Sherry Mills, Her Intuition, and the Boxes She’ll Put You In
Artist Sherry Mills, attempting to commercialize Art Therapy and the Box Art genre simultaneously, and for the first time ever, has launched a new Kickstarter campaign at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sherrymills/matchbox-me-personalized-box-art-on-demand-by-sher to raise funds for her project Matchbox Me: Personalized Box Art On Demand.
Two years ago, multi-media Mills started playing with the genre of Box Art. What is Box Art? Often referred to as Assemblage (and pioneered by the great Joseph Cornell), Box Art usually involves a wooden box artfully filled with various objects that, when combined, reveal a deeper meaning. You may see some of Sherry’s Boxes here: http://www.sherrymills.com/#/boxes/
After great response to a Chelsea show in 2011 in which Sherry unveiled her first person-specific Box Art commissions to the New York City characters they were created to represent, she started to question if there might be a way to produce smaller scale, more affordable versions of her Boxes, but still using her commission type model. That is, still ‘intuiting’ Box arrangements for one person at a time. Once she discovered vintage matchboxes, everything came into focus.
As Sherry puts it “Both therapy and original art purchase are things typically outside the price range of what I would expect to be the millions of people desiring both. Art has been a healing tool throughout the ages, but it’s time for a more targeted approach, one in which art is intuitively created person by person to answer to one’s specific needs and aspirations, and where cost doesn’t stand in the way. It’s time for art that is both transformational and affordable.”
Mills is attempting to commercialize Art Therapy and the Box Art genre simultaneously by utilizing a concept she’s calling “Art Response”. Did you just go through a breakup? Is your Mom sick? Are you gaga for camels? Is your brother crazy for croquet and red things and his birthday is approaching? Are you building a new business and want uniquely personal gifts for your staff? Do you have a fear that’s in the way of your success? Do you seek health, time freedom, a new lifestyle, a release from the thoughts in your head, a new spin on life?
At Matchbox Me, you’ll be able to fill out a profile online, tell Sherry what’s going on for you or someone you love, and she will “answer” you with art arranged inside of a vintage matchbox.
What does this ‘answering’ look like? Well, based on John’s profile, Sherry might feel to use a black Ken shoe to represent the loss of his Father, and a phone to represent the calls he can no longer make to him; but a backdrop of a hand pulling clams from the water and a photo of a found feather on the sidewalk are signs of his Dad’s ever presence in him. Inside Andrea’s box, Sherry might feature a miniature bird wearing doll sunglasses against a zebra striped wallpaper because all it does is make you want to laugh, and Andrea wanted a reason to laugh for the shelf in her bathroom, and is a bird watcher…
Intuition plays a big role.
Reiki certified Mills’ lifelong exploration in various alternative healing modalities – an exploration brought on by a deep need to overcome her own mental challenges – has equipped her with some fun intuitive skills. These fold into her process of “discovering your arrangement”.
Art can be the best of emotional anchors. Yet art that is person-specific can even be transformational.
What gets shipped to you is an aesthetic reminder of something personally meaningful that can greet you when you open your eyes in the morning, when you grab your keys to head out, or as you sit down at your office desk. Your Matchbox Me box can serve as your vision board, your law of attraction device, your mirror into yourself, or simply as a decorative accent piece.
Kickstarter, founded in 2009, is the world’s largest crowdsourcing platform for helping creative projects come to life. It operates under an “all-or-nothing” funding method; projects must hit their predetermined funding goal before any money changes hands.
Check out Matchbox Me on Kickstarter at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sherrymills/matchbox-me-personalized-box-art-on-demand-by-sher and consider being among the first in the world to “get boxed” by Sherry herself! She’s using her own sentimental stash of tiny treasures for these original works created for her Kickstarter backers. Even a $1 donation is met with a reward, and will help her bring Matchbox Me to life! Campaign ends November 4th, 2012.
About Sherry Mills
Vermont-born, Manhattan-based artist Sherry Mills has earned a reputation for her playful range of medium and always-provocative message that nothing is quite what we perceive it to be. Sherry’s artistic vision collapses the familiar distinctions that box our world into opposing categories—high and low; masculine and feminine; tragic and comic; beautiful and ugly; old and young—revealing them to be mere matters of mental perspective housed inside of something that is ultimately still; something that can celebrate trash and treasure as though they were the same thing.
Some of Sherry’s recent accomplishments include: Being selected by the CEO of the world’s largest digital printing company, MMT, to represent its Outdoor and the Arts program; being chosen by Manhattan Borough President, Scott Stringer, for a two month solo exhibit and honorary reception for her project A CLOSER NY in his office gallery; and being granted prominent NYC billboard and Taxi Top space for display of A CLOSER NY imagery by Clear Channel Outdoor’s Local Spirit Campaign. Sherry’s work has been featured by Casa da Abitare Magazine, The New Inquiry Magazine, Dossier Journal, The Beheld, on Bronx Channel 12, Film Courage, and Mingle Media TV.
Sherry’s Collectors include a handful of National Bestselling Authors, among them Keith Ferrazzi (of Never Eat Alone), Howard Bloom (former publicist for Prince, considered “the next Stephen Hawking”), and JP Farrell (The Metaphysician behind Manifesting Michelangelo); Neil McLellan (producer for The Prodigy, Oasis, and Madonna); Claudio Nardi, Architect of the new Museum of Modern Art in Krakow; and Boogaloo Blues hit star Johnny Colon.
