Cheryl K. Shurtleff: The Road is Wider than Long

Born in Ontario, Oregon, in 1947, celebrated artist Cheryl K. Shurtleff grew up on a fruit ranch near Payette, Idaho. She earned a BFA in Drawing and Painting from Boise State College in 1973 and an MA in Art Education from Boise State University in 1978. She went on to earn an MA in Art History from the University of Oregon in 1988. In 2013, Shurtleff retired from Boise State University after a 35-year tenure as a Professor of Art. Her work is in many private and public collections.

The Road is Wider than Long explores Shurtleff’s complex body of work, much of which has a strong bent toward the uncanny, mysterious, and surreal. Borrowing its title from Roland Penrose’s 1938 book of Surrealist poetry, which Shurtleff had among the many books in her library, the exhibition examines both the artwork she created and the ephemera she collected, and underscores the ways in which the objects in Shurtleff’s home and studio informed and inspired her art practice. Featuring both two- and three-dimensional work alongside source imagery and objects, the exhibition showcases the incredible breadth and depth of the work Shurtleff created before her death in 2015.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website