Sherri Lynn Wood

Guest Instructor

"Sherri Lynn Wood teaches improvisational quilting as a creative life practice, and is considered an expert innovator and leader in the modern improv quilting movement. Her best-selling book, The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters: A Guide to Creating, Quilting & Living Courageously (Abrams, 2015), provides scores, or frameworks, for flexible patterns and creative exploration, along with practical instruction in stitching techniques and intuitive colour.

Ever since Sherri Lynn unwittingly defied the sexist dress code at Wiley Junior High School with a modest sundress of her creation, she experienced sewing as a source of creative expression, subversive resistance, and personal empowerment. 

Exposure to the liberated abstract quilts of black makers such as Rosie Lee Tompkins and Arbie Williams in the early 1990’s, ignited her passion for improvisational quilting and initiated her trajectory as a community based artist focused on restorative social practice.

Sherri Lynn is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, two MacDowel Fellowships, and numerous artist residencies, including Recology San Francisco, where she undertook the task of presenting a body of work made entirely from materials scavenged from the city dump. She holds a Master's in Fine Arts in sculpture from Bard College and a degree in Theological Studies from Emory University."