Sherry Markovitz

Sherry Markovitz 

October 3, 1947 – October 24, 2025 

Sherry Markovitz passed away peacefully on October 24, 2025, at the age of 78. Born in Chicago in 1947, she was the beloved daughter of Jack and Rose Buckler Markovitz. She was preceded in death by her brother, Dennis Markovitz, and is survived by her sister, Merilyn Markovitz Salomon, of Chicago. She is also survived by her husband, Peter Millett, and their son, Jake Millett, both of Seattle.

After an early life as a precocious artist, Markovitz earned a BA in Ceramics and Art Education from the University of Wisconsin in 1969, then moved to Seattle to pursue her MFA at the University of Washington, completed in 1975.

Markovitz was a gifted and highly respected artist whose intricately beaded, three-dimensional sculptures were often inspired by animal forms, yet imbued with personality, presence, and feeling. Her art blended beauty, craft, and meaning in ways that captivated viewers and celebrated the connection between humans, animals, and the spirit of the living world. Another ongoing body of paintings and sculpture depicted dolls and stuffed animals, endowed with a very personal pathos. Over her creative career, Markovitz gravitated between these figural forms, and occasionally purely abstract works, also painstakingly beaded over gourds, papier maché forms, and looping branches.

With a career spanning nearly 50 years, Markovitz was recognized with many important exhibitions and awards. Early shows, beginning in 1979, with Linda Farris Gallery in Seattle introduced her beaded animal heads and doll paintings. Later exhibitions, with Monique Knowlton Gallery in New York City, broadened her career on a more national basis. Since 2000, she has been represented by Greg Kucera Gallery, in Seattle, with exhibitions of her paintings of dogs and dolls, embellished figural sculptures, and beaded abstract sculptural works.

In 2019, Markovitz received the Yvonne Twining Humber Lifetime Achievement Award from Artist Trust. She was awarded a grant for painting from the Washington State Arts Commission in its Washington Honors Program. Her work was shown in many museum exhibitions throughout her career— notably her 2008 retrospective, Shimmer: Paintings and Sculptures 1979–2007, organized by the Washington State University Art Museum, (Jordan Schnitzer Museum), Pullman, WA— which traveled to the Bellevue Arts Museum, WA and the Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR.

Her art is included in the permanent collections of institutions such as the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY; Seattle Art Museum; Tacoma Art Museum; Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle; Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC: Museum of Arts & Design, New York; and John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; among others.

Markovitz's creativity, compassion, and quiet strength will be deeply missed by all who knew her. She leaves behind a lasting legacy through her art and the lives she touched. 

Please share memories and photographs on the guestbook, located below. 

Arrangements Entrusted to Emmick Family Funeral Home of Seattle, WA