Artist draws inspiration from everyday life

Imagine a farmer plowing his harvest on a spring day while ships are sailing from the edge of the sea. As the farmer tills and the ships sail, there is a small pair of legs disappearing into the deep. Those small legs are of a boy, Icarus, drowning.
The imagery of a small detail going unnoticed as wayfarers continue their routine is not only a pervasive theme in Bruegel’s painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, but also within the artwork of a Queens inspired artist, Kim Sheridan.
As New Yorkers speedily walk through streets, signal a taxi driver to stop, run to catch a bus or tumble down the subway stairs there are “objects that sit quietly on the city sidewalks begging to be noticed,” according to Sheridan, 33, whose artwork is inspired from her daily commute to work at Richmond Hill High School and her home in Rego Park.
“I am a constant observer of my environment and I see an unlikely beauty in these peeling, faded and sometimes deformed structures,” Sheridan said.
The Icarus of Queens – through Sheridan’s eyes – is a newspaper bin brimming with garbage in Flushing or an umbrella jutting from a trash can cover in Brooklyn. It is a defunct fire alarm box at the corner of a street on Queens Boulevard or a subway bench shining with its decay and lackluster. These “unsung heroes of city living” have stories to tell about the reality around them and Sheridan’s focus is to bring these stories out of disregard through her paintings and sculptures.
“I remember looking at a fire alarm box and finding it so fascinating and then doing research on how Bloomberg was trying to get engineers to look at those that don’t work or had no use, it’s something that people don’t normally look at,” said Sheridan. “By yanking these objects out of their cement home, I force the viewer to finally slow down and take notice of all the subtle textures and histories each object has.”
Sheridan also mentioned that the “simple idea” for her art can spark conversations about topics of urban life such as pedestrian plazas, sanitation, MTA budget cuts and 3-1-1 issues.
Graduating from Queens College in February 2011, Sheridan earned her master’s in Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting. She also earned master’s in Art Education from Teachers College Columbia University and her bachelor’s in Studio Art from New York University.
“At Richmond Hill High School, I provide projects where students explore how art and everyday life merge together,” Sheridan said. “Art goes way beyond the classroom – it’s not something you do when you are tired, bored — it’s a skill that develops your critical thinking, its part of life and my students see the openness of art and things in their environment.”
Sheridan recalls giving her students an assignment to stroll through Jamaica Avenue, close to the high school and sketch images of buildings having unlikely beauty, decay or patterns and also traveling to an art museum with a new eye based on the skills developed in class.
“Working as a security guard at the Met [years back], gave me a whole new education about art,” Sheridan said. “Walking through those galleries and talking to people every day I learned so much about art.”
She also said that her daily experience in Queens and working with her students helps her grow as an artist because her students challenge her with questions and have an “openness to learn.”
Sheridan was one of 15 recipients nationwide of the Joan Mitchell MFA Award, which will give her a grant to participate in a 2012 group exhibition of grant recipients’ work and possibly further her artistic career in order to transition from academic to professional studio work.
Her next projects include a painting or sculpture of a phone booth that seemed rammed to the ground on the street and children’s rides outside grocery stores.