Jim Sherraden: Personal Woodcuts

About the Exhibit:

Hatch Show Print’s Haley Gallery offers visitors a comprehensive look at the work of Hatch Show Print’s master printer in a new installation Jim Sherraden: Personal Woodcuts featuring his woodcut prints dating from the beginning of Sherraden’s 30-year career as a printmaker up to recent multimedia interpretations.

Sherraden was introduced to Hatch Show Print in 1984 by a Vanderbilt University art instructor who noticed Sherraden’s wood and linoleum prints hanging in a local restaurant. Sherraden visited Hatch, one of the oldest working letterpress shops in America, and shortly thereafter was offered an opportunity to work at Hatch, where he spent the next several years as shop manager and curator, overseeing the collection of one of Nashville’s most iconic landmarks.

In 1992, Sherraden began creating artwork from the shop’s collection of hand-cut blocks, designed and carved by shop co-founder Charles Hatch’s son Will T. Hatch and the shop staff. Sherraden’s contemporary creations from the historic blocks—monoprints—are collected by individuals and institutions worldwide. In 2005, Sherraden returned to carving his own woodcuts, developing a new body of work that includes the artist cutting up his printed pieces and mixing and matching the patchwork imagery, resulting in quilt-like compositions.

In 2013 Sherraden received a Distinguished Artist of the Year Award from the state of Tennessee. He has overseen dozens of exhibits, including one that featured Hatch Show Print and traveled for four years in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution. This exhibit surveys over three decades of Sherraden’s printmaking, displayed in Hatch Show Print’s Haley Gallery.

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