www.dscherer.com
deidre@dscherer.com

"Red Hat"

"First Stitch"

Deidre Scherer studied at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI, during the mid sixties. In the 70’s while raising her three daughters, she developed her distinctive narrative approach in the medium of fabric and thread, using scissors and sewing machine as drawing tools.  While creating a series modeled after elders in her community, Scherer addressed issues on aging and dying as she simultaneously pioneered the figurative potential of her medium.

About her medium Scherer states, “Fabric stirs the sense of touch – we are wrapped

in cloth from birth through death.  I have combined the techniques of piecing, layering and machine-sewing to make a tactile surface that intimately engages the viewer.”

Scherer’s work has been shown in over 150 solo and group shows nationally and internationally at venues such as the Brockton Art Museum in Brockton, MA; the Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, MA; the Renwick in Washington, DC; and the Dennis Woodman Gallery in Kew, England.  In 1998, she was honored with a solo, Deidre Scherer: The Threaded Image, at the Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland.

Scherer’s exhibition The Last Year, was shown in Montreal at the 1994 International Congress on Care of the Terminally Ill and has since traveled to over 25 sites including the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, MA; the Redding Museum of Art in Redding, CA; the Dennos Museum in Traverse City, MI; and the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY. In 1999, the Museum of the American Quilter’s Society in Paducah, KY, honored her with a retrospective, Deidre Scherer: Layered Visions.

In 1994 she received an Artist’s Fellowship from the Vermont Arts Council. Starting in 2000, Scherer was awarded a Fine Arts Fellowshipfrom The Open Society Institute during which she created her series of six life-size panels, Surrounded by Family and Friends.  In May 2001, this exhibition premiered at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, VT, and continues to travel to venues such as the Karl Drerup Gallery at Plymouth State College, NH; the Genet Gallery at Syracuse University; the Maltwood Art Museum in Victoria, British Columbia, and the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion Museum in New York. In October 2007, the show opens at the Appleton Museum of Art in Ocala, FL.

Of this series, Scherer says, “While alleviating the invisibility and painful silence

that surround the issues of aging and mortality, my images show death as a natural process of life. These tableaus provoke a dialogue that is essential to our times.”

Her pieces grace the covers of seven anthologies including When I am An OldWoman I Shall Wear Purple (Papier-Mache Press, 1996.)  Concentrating on the inspiration and development of her art, she wrote and designed Deidre Scherer: Work in Fabric & Thread (C&T Publishing, 1998.)  Beginning in March 2007, filmmaker Camilla Rockwell will release “Holding Our Own”, an hour-long documentary based in part on Scherer’s creation of her series, Surrounded by Family and Friends.

In hundreds of private collections, her work is also found in public collections including the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Cahoon Museum of American Art in Cotuit, MA; the Museum of Science in Boston, MA; St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, NY; and Tuck School at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. Scherer and her husband live in Vermont where she works full time as a studio artist.