The vetting process to get art in a gallery in New York City is typically grueling with applications, portfolios and months on a waiting list for a brief moment of fame.
Fortunately for Emmie Sherertz, art teacher at Annunciation Catholic School, this was not the case.
“Most all artists apply for a show,” Sherertz said. “They send in images, and then that show accepts or rejects. This particular gallery, Van Der Plas Gallery in Manhattan, reached out to me via Instagram and said, ‘We really like your work. We want you to be in this show.’ That was pretty exciting to have a gallery reach out and say, ‘We want these paintings in our show.’”
Some of Sherertz’s abstract paintings were featured at the Van Der Plas Gallery in an installation called “Chaos and Stillness,” which ran from Jan. 20 to Jan. 29.
Her love for art started out when she was younger and her aunt, Belinda Wright, who is mother to Atlanta Braves pitcher Kyle Wright, bought Sherertz her first paint set.
From there it progressed to painting, sculpting and now teaching.
“Kyle’s mother is an artist, and she’s also an engineer at NASA,” Sherertz said. “She bought me my first paint set and has my very first painting. I’ve always had the freedom to create, and at 16 I saved money and flew myself and a friend to New York. We stayed with a relative in Little Italy, and New York has had a huge impact on my life. It’s just my favorite place in the world.”
The showing in New York sent Manhattan-based pianist Margin Alexander to her Instagram, and he was inspired to write a performance piece based on one of Sherertz paintings. The musician reached out to Sherertz to get permission to use her art during his performance in Manhattan.
Sherertz is a Tuscumbia, Alabama, native who has called Columbus home for the last 10 years as her husband, Sam, is an instructor pilot at Columbus Air Force Base.
Emmie met Sam when she was a graduate student at the University of Alabama and Sam was in pilot training at CAFB.
“We met at ‘The Legacy’ where downstairs was a country music bar with finger foods, and upstairs was more like the undergrads who could stay out all night,” Emmie said. “We say we met with a ‘wink and an eye’ because he tried to impress me with his pilot friends by just winking and nodding. I was like, ‘I’m too old for that,’ but I was 24. He thought that was really funny, so he came over and talked to me. Our first dance was to ‘Dixieland Delight,’ and it was the first dance song at our wedding.”
From there, the two left the South to Sam’s new station in California, which Emmie said despite the housing crisis of the late 2000s impacting the area, the art scene was still thriving.
She credits the art scene in Northern California and New York City as inspiration for her art that has roots in the contour of the female body and dichotomies within the body and everyday life. Her studio is based out of a mother-in-law suite at her home, and it allows her to still be a mom of two boys — Ben, 11, and Alex, 9 — but also have her own hobby.
“I’ve always loved painting,” Emmie said. “However, my master’s is in (art with an emphasis in sculpture). I love to translate 2-D to 3-D, but being a mom and not having proper studio space for sculpture, I just kind of leaned into painting. … My own original artwork has its roots in blind contour drawing of women. I’m interested in capturing the movement of the body and not the idealized form, which is really interesting because there’s a lot of freedom there. We’re (women) so critical of our bodies and there’s just this huge mind-body disconnect that being able to see your body portrayed in a rhythmic manner is very freeing.”
In 2021, she found herself pulled in three directions as a 3-year-olds’ teacher at a day care, as an adjunct professor at Mississippi University for Women and as an art teacher for her sons’ classes at ACS. When ACS asked her to come on full time, she accepted and dropped the other two positions.
She said being the art teacher at ACS allows her to see her sons but to also send updates to parents she’s friends with throughout the day of their children’s work.
Eventually, Emmie said, though she loves the Columbus community, her family intends to move to the Atlanta area once Sam retires from the Air Force.
The glamor of the art scene doesn’t mean much to her because she is a mother first and foremost, she said.
“I like that I’m older so a lot of the pomp and circumstance doesn’t appeal to me,” Emmie said. “I like to sit in the corner and see what people say about my art more than being the central focus of my art. … It’s exciting, and I don’t want to belittle that. But, I also have to come home to sick children and cook and clean. Ultimately I’m a mom, and I’m not going to lose sight of that.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 37 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
