Sherri Lynn Wood is a two-time MacDowell Fellow, the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors, and numerous artist residencies, including The Headlands Center for the Arts and Recology San Francisco, where she undertook the task of presenting a body of work made completely from materials scavenged from the city dump. She holds a Masters in Fine Arts from Bard College and in Theological Studies from Emory University.
She has been improvising quilts as a creative life practice for 30 years. Her best selling publication, The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters: A Guide to Creating, Quilting & Living Courageously (Abrams, 2015) with over 28,000 copies in circulation, provides scores for flexible patterns and creative exploration, along with practical instruction in stitching techniques and intuitive color.
At MacDowell in 2006, Wood completed four functional improvisational quilts, and collaborated with Ignacio Alcantara to create a video animation, "Sewing for Jesus." During her 2007 residency, she completed a how-to video for Prayer Banner: REPENT, a communal mourning project concerning the war in Iraq.
