Sirlin's art has been shown all over the world and includes massive installations that dominate entire buildings in Venice, Italy, Atlanta, Georgia, London, England, Antalya, Turkey, New Orleans, Louisiana and Evora, Portugal.

While at SUNY, Sirlin studied painting under Mark Greenwald and art history with Ann Sutherland Harris.

Sirlin earned an MFA in Painting from Queens College, City University of New York (1980), where she studied under artists Gabriel Laderman, Charles Cajori, Benny Andrews, and Clinton Hill, and art critic Robert Pincus-Witten.

Sirlin is perhaps best known for her pivotal installation "Retracings," which encompassed virtually the entire glass front of Atlanta's High Museum of Art in 1999.

[4] Sirlin received a Creative Capital Warhol Foundation Award for Art Writing in 2010 mentored under Hayden Herrera.