profile story.
When presented with a piece of advertising or corporate graphics, local artist Levi Sherman doesn’t take it at face value. He won’t be persuaded to “buy now” or “click here.” He sees beyond the corporate façade. Sherman will pick it apart piece by piece, to investigate how this language influences public reality.
Sherman, a self-described skeptic and cynic, focuses his art on the visual messaging of companies and how it reflects the structure of society. He pursues this analysis further through his position as Vice President of Resident Arts, a local non-profit that helps emerging artists establish their careers.
“I like to help people think through things,” Sherman said. “So, sort of like showing processes and giving other people a way of thinking about how something was made.”
His practice of deconstructing advertising began at the University of Arizona where he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Communication. Sherman developed a fondness for his fine art classes and saw them as a refuge from other required classes. This admiration led him to earn his Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts at Columbia College in Chicago.
Upon completion of his MFA, Sherman and his wife Carley Gomez moved to Columbia so that Gomez could earn her PhD in creative writing at MU. The couple has been in Columbia for three years and they have established their home through involvement in local arts.
“It’s been nice because it’s an approachable size city where we feel like we can actually be involved in the community and what goes on here,” Gomez said.
Interested in younger and scrappier organizations, Resident Arts grabbed the attention of Sherman and Gomez when they moved to Columbia. Shortly after becoming a member, Sherman got involved and taught book binding at the after-school program.
“With Resident Arts, it’s really encouraging to see that a small board and a very involved founder and director can run an after-school program that has a big impact on young people’s lives,” Sherman said.
Resident Arts founder and President Madeleine LeMieux described Sherman as her right-hand man. LeMieux cited his help with the Art for Science mural project, located on the MKT trail underpass at Elm Street.
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The mural is in partnership with the Office of Sustainability, Department of Parks and Recreation and the Hinkson Creek Restoration Project. The Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit science advocacy organization, awarded six organizations across the U.S., including Resident Arts, with $10,000 to create public art that showcased the importance of science in conjunction with the national Science Rising movement.
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To Sherman and LeMieux, this mural offers more to Columbia than just something pleasing to the eye. It serves as an inspirational function rather than an informational function.
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“Public art is a way for the community to reflect its values, both outwardly and to itself,” Sherman said. “On the one hand, no matter what art goes up, the value of making a place for citizens to express and reflect one another’s values is really important.”
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Sherman’s understanding and deconstruction of corporate advertising gives him more faith in public pieces of art because he knows public art provides a visual stimulus that isn’t a private or commercial message. Sherman places his belief in public art and community engagement as a way of engendering good citizenship.
A perfect example of creating that good citizenship is the Art for Science mural. According to LeMieux, most public art is made at the hands of a single artist, but the Art for Science mural is created by young artists in Resident Arts, as well as members of the community who were invited to a community painting day Oct. 6.
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“You might make the argument that being engaged in that space in a way that beautifies it and makes it better for everyone equates good citizenship because you’re not just ignoring, you’re directly engaging in something for the betterment or the greater good,” LeMieux said.
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A quote from media theorist Marshall McLuhan lines the entirety of the mural. It reads, “There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.” This highlights the mural’s theme of community responsibility to the planet.
For Sherman, this isn’t a message that can be picked apart piece by piece. There is no corporate façade. There is just community.