Featured Member: Sheri Crider

Sheri Crider is a visual artist, owner of Sanitary Tortilla Factory, and FUSE Makerspace business member. Sanitary Tortilla Factory is an art space that includes an exhibition space, fabrication space, 15 working artist studio spaces, and offers artist residencies. On the website she states, “ I think of the space as an experimental first phase of a seven-year plan for the multi-faceted visual arts center. Strategically implemented programming creates iterations of art that hopes to engage and strengthens its community. Our community is vast. It is my hope that our circles are filled with cons, hustlers, academics and hipsters alike.”

Sheri has been a FUSE Makerspace business member since last fall primarily using the laser cutter to etch and cut her work. Most recently she went on an endeavor to create over 650 wood birds for her series Flight, a multi-media installation that sheds light on an immigration detention center.  At FUSE Makerspace she used the laser cutter in order to convert her drawn birds into cut and etched parts that she later assembled. Before, Sheri had to outsource the fabrication of her birds but with her FUSE membership she was able to have more hands on control of her large scale project. Sheri sees great possibility in discarded materials, unused spaces, and missed opportunities that inspire her art practice.

Her project is partially sponsored by the Right of Return Fellowship, which invests in formerly incarcerated artists to create original works that can further criminal justice reform in partnership with advocates and organizers.  Sheri Crider is one of the first seven recipients of the fellowship. Flight will be showcased this Friday, August 24 at the UNM Art Museum from 4-7PM.
 
Proceeds from the fundraising workshops during this exhibition will benefit the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center.

You can find out more about Sheri, her work, and Sanitary Tortilla Factory on https://shericriderstf.com/flight/ , http://artmuseum.unm.edu/upcoming-exhibitions/flight/ , and
http://sanitarytortillafactory.org/ or by following her @shericrider and @sanitarytortillafactory on instagram.

Photo caption courtesy of the University New Mexico Museum of Art photo by Stefan Batista.