SHARRON ANTHOLT
In this series of drawings, Antholt uses a magnifying glass and sunlight to burn holes to mark time and place simultaneously. She says, “The idea to use sunlight as a drawing tool came from wanting to make work that was less personal, less about me. “Is it possible to make marks in my drawing that I don’t make?” was a question I pondered.” Using an old magnifying glass, she began experimenting with the idea. Because she was using thin paper her “marks” turned into holes, which added another layer of possibilities. Despite her effort to have less of herself in these drawings, her decisions about size, shape, edge, surface and countless other things make the work entirely her own.
ABOUT SHARRON ANTHOLT
Memory and place are the starting points from which I unravel the work of the painting. And this ‘unraveling’ together with the ‘waiting’ is where surprises in the work are revealed and it is where, for me, my paintings acquire their deepest meaning.
– Sharron Antholt, Lummi Island, WA, 2021
Sharron Antholt has always been interested in the experimental and inventive process of making art and in exploring the relationship of this process to the interconnected ideas of ‘memory’, ‘meaning’ and ‘place’. At the same time, she acknowledges the importance of waiting in the process; waiting as an act of doing nothing. Even the process of finding the right image to start with requires more waiting than searching and yet the waiting is a concentrated effort.
Antholt was born and raised in California and received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She spent many of her summers in Jenner and Cazadero on the coast where both of her grandmothers lived. Her work has been strongly influenced by this early connection to the California coast. When she was 21, she traveled to Pakistan to visit her father who was working on a water project in Lahore. Pakistan was like nothing Antholt had experienced. She enrolled in the Art Department at Lahore University and stayed for a year. At the end of that time, she chose to live in Nepal for five years and later, a year in Sri Lanka and still later, three years in India. These experiences have continued to be an important influence in her work.
Between sojourns in the Indian sub-continent, Antholt lived for a number of years in the Washington DC area where she also exhibited her work. She moved to Bellingham, WA in 1996 to teach at Western Washington University and now lives on Lummi Island.
Antholt has been awarded residencies from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony and grants from the Washington, DC Commission on the Arts and Artist Trust in Seattle. Exhibitions of her work include the Steinbeck Museum, The Carl Cherry Center for the Arts, Anton Inn, Green Chalk Contemporary, Monterey, CA; Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, Washington; National Museum for Women in the Arts, The Corcoran Gallery, Washington Project for the Arts, Anton Gallery, all in Washington, DC; Maryland Art Place, School 33. MD; McLean Project for the Arts, VA; Indian International Center, New Delhi, Chemould Gallery, Calcutta, India and Tretykov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
