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Born in 1954, Sherrill spent his childhood at his father's workshop in Charlotte, NC, playing with boards, nails, and other machine scraps. He moved to the western North Carolina mountains in 1974, becoming a primarily self-taught artist influenced by nearby creative communities, such as the Penland School of Crafts and the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild. His early works in the seventies and eighties consisted of functional clay objects before he shifted to more abstract concepts, forms, and sculptures in the nineties. It was during this time that his work was selected to appear in the White House Collection of American Crafts that traveled to different venues around the country in 1993. His contribution to that collection, "Incandescent Bottles," is now housed at the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum. His works can also be found in other major institutions like the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum at Icheon World Ceramic Center in South Korea, where in 2004 he was invited to create a permanent, outdoor sculpture. He also started the pottery toolline, Mudtools, after feeling a need for certain instruments that, at the time, didn't exist.
Sherrill defines himself as a material based artist, working with mainly metal, glass, and clay. This exhibition organized by the Mint Museum will highlight his development as an artist over several decades—such as his shift from functional objects to multimedia sculptures and drawing inspiration from the natural world. It will consist of approximately sixty examples of his work and will be accompanied by an exhibition catalog. As his artist statement reads, "It is as if I have been asleep, and when I wake up, I am surprised by the things that surround me. In my case, it is the flora and fauna surrounding my studio that continue to surprise me. For me, these discoveries are epiphanies. My desire is to create something that might bring its observer to the same place of discovery." This is not, however, his first collaboration with the Mint Museum. In 2003 he was named their Artist of the Year.
