Norman Cherry has had a long and satisfying career, much of it spent combining the roles of educator, consultant, curator, and maker. His work has always been very much about materiality, the joy of the haptic process experienced through the exploration of materials and processes, very much informed by thorough historical, technical and visual research via the sheer sensuous experience of drawing.
As an occasional beachcomber, Norman finds joy in seeing uses for other people’s detritus and often collect small bits of flotsam and jetsam. Covid-19 and the two lockdown periods focussed him very much on creating work which did not involve the purchase of new materials, especially precious metals, and out of this came the “felted” works which have utilised some of the beachcombings (mainly fragments of fishermen’s nets) and household lint collected from his clothes dryer.
Most recently Norman has used other beachcombings to creating the fanciful Gift of the Sea: Pseudoeryngium Normanii for the Through the Garden Gate exhibition in Shanghai. The set of personal alarms for the touring exhibition Swords into Ploughshares: Knives into Jewels, of which he is a co-curator, utilises old domestic knives which have been repurposed as working personal alarms which can be blown into in order to emit a piercing shriek.
