Sherri Trial is a lettering artist, who has extensively exhibited in juried fine art shows for over 30 years. She has garnered many awards in national and international exhibits. Exhibit sites have included the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art, New Zealand, Moscow, and Tokyo. She is largely self-taught, with only a few workshops to guide her through her career. 

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Sherri works primarily on calfskin of goatskin parchment, which seems like a natural choice. Her first encounter with parchment was in a 1989 workshop with Donald Jackson, the Scribe to the Queen of England. She immediately became fascinated with calligraphy, taking inspiration from the manuscripts of Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells, as well as the works of modern calligraphers. Several years ago, she attended a workshop in NY to learn how parchment is made, which only adds to the exquisiteness of the material upon understanding and undergoing the laborious process. The methods have not changed much over the centuries, resulting in a velvety substrate that is magical when applying watercolor and gold leaf.

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The majority of her work is small to miniature, with miniaturism being her specialty. Such specialized fine art involves rendering subjects 1/6 life-size or less and containing them in less than 25 sq. inches. That said, past interesting projects have included a mural, the Street Gallery exhibit on billboards in South Carolina, and the Harrisburg CowParade. Publications that have featured her art include Letter Arts Review, Washington DC Guild’s Scripsit, the Alphabet journal from the San Francisco calligraphy guild, and most recently the 25th Anniversary Edition of the Speedball Textbook.

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She was awarded lifetime membership in the Miniature Artists of America (MAA) in 1991; she also belongs to the Chicago Calligraphy Collective, the Friends of Calligraphy guild in San Francisco, the Society of Scribes & Illuminators in England (lay member), Miniature Painters, Sculptors & Gravers Society of DC, Miniature Art Society of Florida, and the Perry County Council of the Arts. She lives and works in central PA with her partner and their furry/feathered/many-legged pets.