| "Furbie Findes A Throne" Stripped down ferbie toy enhanced with anxiety producing features. |
| Sherman's Sculptures Probe Essence of Human Experience by Susan Dugan When Ira Sherman's parents learned his third-grade teachers in North Chicago thought he had artistic talent, they decided to spring for art lessons in nearby Evanston. Maybe it would distract him from taking all his toys apart. "Call my mother up right now, and she'll tell you about how I used to take apart every single toy they gave me," he says. "They would get real upset at me because it was much more interesting than playing with them. And I still do that. I take my kids' toys apart. " Take the interactive metal helmet he invented that sits in the corner of his Washington Park studio/home. It communicates with people via a pared down Furby-like creature (confiscated from his eight-year-old twin boys) that talks up a blue streak when it's not emitting a stream of socially incorrect body noises. Sherman amuses himself with such diversions while producing an amazing array of fine jewelry, interactive sculpture, and Judaic ceremonial art. Immersed in mechanics as a kid (his father owned a metal fabricating machinery company), he developed an early respect for the relationship between form and function. "Remember how the old Singer sewing machines had those wonderful cast iron legs?" he says. "That's how the machinery was back then, and I really liked that kind of turn-of-the-century aesthetic."But the technology of the human body fascinated him most. He studied biology and chemistry in high school and college, taking art classes on the side. "I did have a really cool instructor in my last two years of high school who turned me on to Picasso. And I liked the idea that artists can do things that nobody else can. And it gave me a subconscious identity." |
| Not surprisingly, Sherman's sculpture reflects his early interests in art, mechanics, and biology. His pieces belong to an ongoing, 20-year-plus exhibit entitled Panaceas to Persistent Problems. "I make devices that solve a social issue that can never be solved," he says. "Sometimes brutally, sometimes absurdly. Like the anti-rape device that sends out little stainless steel darts and only the woman knows the way to get it off. Or the explosion injection forming harness that allows people who are not artists to know what it's like to be an artist. It's the only piece of jewelry that actually manufactures another piece of jewelry as you wear it. And it goes through all the contortions an artist goes through. We get locked on an idea, and then we go through all the suffering, and then we have this wonderful piece."While admittedly obsessed by his craft, Sherman claims he never experiences artists' block. "I lock on an idea and dwell on it for years," he says. "I stay with it and stay with it. But I never get stuck. I have too many things going at once. I have more than two lifetimes of projects that I'll never even get to." |
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| CLICK HERE for links to: "Furby's Frenetic Workout" The latest piece in Sherman's collection of empowered toys that play with people |
| copyright 2009 Ira D. Sherman |