Sherry Owens - "Restless as the Sea"

Sherry Owens, Restless as the Sea, color stone and plate lithograph, image size 27 x 42 inches, edition of 20.

Sherry Owens develops her visual language through a deep exploration of the relationship between humanity and nature. Restless as the Sea draws inspiration from cut-back grass Owens observed on the campus of Sam Houston State University. The grass, trimmed into uniform rows, reflects both the often violent imprint of human intervention on the natural world and nature’s enduring capacity for regrowth and resilience. Her title harks to the fact that the plains covered with grasses grow on land that eons in the past was at the the bottom of the sea.

In this work, Owens’ energetic lines burst from the paper, forming dense, layered structures that weave in and out of themselves. These dynamic forms culminate in a Cy Twombly-esque composition—simultaneously explosive and meditative.

Restless as the Sea was printed using four layers of earthy tones that echo Owens’ swift, expressive drawing style. Texture plays a central role in the piece, achieved through unconventional tools such as steel wool and sandpaper. These methods create the scratchy, tactile effects seen especially at the base of the print.

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Sherry Owens is one of Texas’s most celebrated sculptors and was the 2024 Kollwitz Residency artist at Flatbed. Based in Dallas, she earned her BFA from Southern Methodist University. Her work has been widely exhibited across Texas and the Southwest. Notable recent exhibitions include Promise Me the Earth (2020), a solo show at The Grace Museum in Abilene; a two-person site-specific installation at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum in Austin (2018); and inclusion in Commanding Space: Women Sculptors of Texas at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. In 2017, she held solo exhibitions at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas and the Martin Museum of Art at Baylor University. Owens has also exhibited internationally in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, India, Peru, and Turkey, and was featured in The First Crosscurrent Yokohama–Texas International Artists Exchange Show 2019 at the Kanagawa Prefectural Gallery in Yokohama, Japan.