For the past eight years, Sherry Mills – a photographer, sculptor, painter, and performance artist – has shot extreme close-ups of urban imperfections in cities all over the world. Using an old Canon 35mm she has photographed broken drainpipes, cracked concrete, and melted paint from one foot away. The images, which she transferred onto large, recyclable vinyl posters, ended up on New York billboards and scaffolds, just above the heads of New Yorkers who walked by MIlls’ art every day without noticing.

The series, entitled A CLOSER NY, provided a striking, emotional view from below, a sort of accidental graffiti. What looks like a delinquent’s artful scrawl on an abandoned surface turns out to be spilled street paint on a sidewalk; Mills’ portrayal of an abandoned cardboard box has a compelling angularity; and the façade of a decrepit dumpster is transformed into an expressionist tableau.

A small blond woman whose intricately mismatched clothes and cat-eye glasses evoke Heather Matarazzo’s character in Welcome to the Dollhouse, Mills says she was first inspired to get up close and personal during a trip to Greece. She visited the Parthenon, but, rather tellingly, it was on her way back from the site that she had a moment — with a purple drainpipe.

“I was walking along this beautiful little street with cobblestones when I saw a wall with crumbling plaster and a cracked drainpipe,” she recalls. “It looked like the perfect triptych and I remember having an aha moment. I could transfer my passion for abstract expressionist painting to the camera.”

Mills says her work is defined by perspective. “There’s a way of seeing the sidewalk, a way of experiencing juxtapositions, or even experiencing the clothes on my body … your happiness comes down to how you regard your circumstances, and I want to develop this through different media,” she says.

“There are two ways to cry over spilled milk,” reads Mills’ artists’ statement. “One is for how fabulous it looks.”

Sherry Mills grew up in rural Vermont. She took to art fairly young, and credits her grandmother, an artist and antique collector, who is now 92, for encouraging her to make crafts, jewelry, and tiny vegetables made of clay. When she was 12 Mills started her own business selling these vegetables (she says the business was a success, but mostly because her neighbors chose to humor her.)

As a child, Mills also had a lazy eye and an astigmatism. She had to wear an eye-patch to correct her vision, which literally let her see things differently.

“I never seek out inspiration” she says. “When I was doing A CLOSER NY, I always had a camera on me. But I never went out with the intention of shooting. I just bring along my camera and things find me as I go around.”

“I see them because I’m open to seeing them,” she adds.

Mills attended the University of New Hampshire and studied with artist Ray Anderson. At the time, she was inspired by Robert Rauschenberg and Patti Smith; she found most her college coursework to be a bore. After her sophomore year, Mills took off to Italy to study marble sculpture in Pieta Santa. She then traveled the country before falling in love with an Italian mask-maker, eventually settling with him in Venice to learn his trade.

After six months, Mills decided to return to the U.S., but “going back to school was unfathomable. I couldn’t imagine doing China 101 all over again.” She wanted to continue to work with leather, but lacked the space and resources, so she took to photography. “It became my primary medium out of necessity … there was no space for a studio in New York.”

Though the project came together almost accidentally, A CLOSER NY was by all accounts a great success. Mills attracted the attention of several public art organizations and won the support of Metromedia (which put seven of her posters along 40 feet of on scaffolds along East 4th Street). Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer exhibited her photographs in his office for two months. And Nathlie Michel, A French filmmaker, is in the process of shooting a documentary about Sherry’s work. “It’s really a weird experience,” says Mills, on being caught on camera. “You see yourself and hear yourself in a different way. I think it’s made me reconsider myself as an artist.”

For her latest collection, which will be on display at Chelsea’s Rogue Gallery on June 30th for one night only, Mills has gone from billboards to boxes. She is in the process of creating personalized, fully-lit, 21-inch dollhouses based on her own childhood experiences. She’s also making boxes for other people: Of the works to be exhibited, three of them were commissions, and four were for people she knew. Boxes, says Mills, are a way to channel emotions into confined, organized spaces, and eventually let hard feelings go. Thinking inside the box, she says, is not just for squares.

“I love small spaces because I always have to edit and get rid of things,” she explains. “The boxes are very controlled and organized. Da Vinci once said that living a small space disciplines your mind, and I totally agree with that.”

Mills’ Upper East Side apartment, which she shares with her partner, an art restorer, is an exercise in self-discipline (and dusting). It is tiny — barely big enough for one — with carefully arranged trinkets, paintings, and small collectibles on almost every surface. The furniture is arranged by the principles of Feng Shui, but the bathroom door won’t quite shut. It’s on the first floor, so natural sunlight is scarce; candles appear early and stay lit well into the evening.

Sherry Mills. THINK INSIDE THE BOX FOR A ONE-NIGHT ONLY ART CELEBRATION. Thursday, June 30th, 2011, 6-8PM. Rogue Gallery, Chelsea Arts Building, 508-526 West 26th Street, Studio 9E, NYC

Accidental Graffiti: On Sherry Mills

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