Sarah’s formal training is in communication arts as a graphic designer and a visual storyteller, in what has been predominately a digital space. She’s sought to counterbalance and compliment the digital work through teaching, illustration, and working with raw and tactile materials such as paper, clay, and leaves. Her eye for the tactile and natural world made a unique turn in 2015 after observing how natural light illuminated papery onion skins in her kitchen. This material conveyed a vibrancy that begged to be created with, which is exactly what she sought out to do. Those creations morphed into merging her love of graphic bold shapes, raw organic edges and the human body to what you see today. In 2020, Sarah debuted her ceramic work in Taichung, Taiwan and in 2021, her first solo exhibition, titled Dancing Onions, a collection of 30 works. Returning to her home city of Portland, Oregon in 2022, she continues to evolve her artwork, creating and showing new collections in this unique medium.
Pare down to the essence, but don’t remove the poetry. – Leonard Koren
My inspiration is gathered from all forms of dance and observing how we humans move in the everyday. I pay attention to our rhythms of walking, the weight of stepping, the stretch of reaching, the shrugs of shoulders, twists and tilts of torsos, and nods of heads observing the world around us. My process involves looking for organically occurring shapes in the papery onion skin material that embodies these subtle human movements. Every placement is important when I consider the graphic composition because I want the viewer to be transported to that movement, to feel and relate to it. I’m telling a visual story of one person’s joy through movement. The human compositions are visually held together by stark white negative space, which delineates a torso, which the viewer’s eye naturally fills in. The work expresses a universal theme of simply moving in our bodies, often joyfully. This unusual yet tactile and familiar material pulls the viewer in with curiosity. I’ve witnessed children and adults dance or strike a pose to imitate a figure’s pose that speaks to them in a personal and often inexplainable way. It’s visceral. It’s abstract. It’s pure joy.