Sharon Church
A pleasant historic complex of court yards and buildings lines the brick path to Sharon Church’s home and studio. The house is part of a posh horse barn that housed carriages and four large horse stalls. Her home is one cell of the barn, rehabilitated with human quarters on two floors. Plastered walls, timber cross beams, rafters, doors and original sliding stall doors provide a symbiotic setting for the artist’s wood carving and jewelry studio
THE LEARNING YEARS
Named as an American Craft Council Fellow in 2012, Church, 67, earned her B.S. degree at Skidmore College, and still has a square ebony and silver ring from that period. At the School for American Craftsmen, Rochester Institute of Technology, where she attended graduate school, Albert Paley was her teacher during the first year. This was her introduction to subtractive work. An art nouveau-like patterned hand mirror, a necklace with silver pendant/clasp, and a silver, lidded candy dish on four legs reflect the expertise in metals that Sharon had acquired by the end of graduate school.
