Let me now introduce the inaugural member of the global congregation of art monks featured in my new book ART ABOVE EVERYTHING: Sheryl Oring! We met in New York City a quarter-century ago, when the National Coalition Against Censorship (where I then worked) co-sponsored a showing of her extraordinary project Writer’s Block, for which she collected and imprisoned 600 vintage typewriters inside 21 steel cages as a statement against censorship. Writer’s Block premiered at the site of a Nazi book-burning in Berlin before traveling to Budapest, Boston, NYC, and beyond.
As a newbie writer on the verge of publishing her first book, I was in total awe of Sheryl. Thousands of people had attended her shows. Her typewriters traveled by eighteen-wheeler and commanded rave reviews in the international press. So, it was baffling to learn that she—like me—also struggled to pay the rent and occasionally lived without health insurance. Sheryl was the first person to tell me about the safe havens that enable the financial survival of artists like us who lack trust funds and/or spouses: residencies, grants, fellowships, MFA programs, and academic professorships. Sheryl was also the first artist with whom I ever collaborated. Within weeks of meeting, we flew to Houston, hopped in my old car parked in my parent’s driveway, and drove thousands of miles across the Southwest together. By day, we assumed the role of 1960s era secretaries and invited the public to dictate postcards to then-President George W. Bush, which Sheryl typed up verbatim using a manual typewriter for her project “I Wish to Say.” By night, we hit up bookstores, where I read from AROUND THE BLOC. By California, a fierce friendship had formed which sustains us to this day.
Here is what Sheryl has to say about living an art-centered life:
