News

Critical Mass Top 50!!

Woot, woot!! Not to toot my own horn but I made it! I’m in the Critical Mass Top 50!!

What a big honor. It is such a wonderful feeling to know that my work is touching so many other people. Through Photolucida, Critical Mass brings together 200 Jurors from all areas of photographic expertise. First, they select the top 200 Finalists and from that the Top 50. There are a number of further awards from there, but the most important award is knowing my work is being seen and valued. I’m back to grinding soot, but with enthusiasm!

I think the work of the other 49 Top 50 is really compelling and encourage you to go check it out. Thank you jurors and Photolucida

I've won the LensCulture Critics Choice Award

I’m so pleased! My ghost forest was one of 40 photographers projects chosen by the Lens Culture Critics. You can see my portfolio submission at Lens Culture, you can go to the Ghost Forest project page, or you can watch the short video below to get a sense of the piece. (yes, that is me clipping the ends of the cables.)

The wide range of ideas and the talent of the photographers is such that it is worth looking at all the Critics Choice Winners.

One of the things I really appreciate about the Critics Choice Awards is that each Critic writes a short statement about why they picked the project. Here is what Jasper Bode, Director of the Ravestijn Gallery, in Amsterdam, wrote about my work: Climate change is a topic that exists all around us. This particular project struck me in its effective simplicity. Every layer of the project is clear and literally transparent. I would love to see it in real life.

I feel like the Earth is cheering me on.

*Thanks to Sarah Stuart for taking the video!

Ghost Forest

Ghost forest with viewers!!

Thank you everyone for coming out and seeing my show. The three evenings of extended hours were busy and fun.

I like how the forest glows with people in it.

 

Sneak Preview

Here is a sneak preview of the Ghost Forest! Come see me at the exhibition during the extended hours - February 24th through 26th from 5:30pm to 8pm!

I'm exhibiting my Ghost Forest at Lane Community College in Eugene Oregon. The photographs are made from ash from wildfires and hang on cable "trees" creating an emmersive experience.

In the fall of 2020, huge wildfires raged on the west coast of the U.S., our sky turned yellow-gray from smoke, it rained ash across the whole country and left us gasping for breath. I mourned the loss of forest lands now blackened with carbon. Carbon, the basic building block of life, carbon the remains after a fire, carbon a material I use to create art. Carbon-print, considered the most archival of all photo printing processes, with an estimated life of 10,000 years. The charred remains of the trees became photographs in my mind. After extensive research, and experimentation, the forest memories, printed on glass to accentuate their fragility, hang before you. My process and the resulting prints, with their frilled edges and torn emulsion echo the way natural fire cycles can surmount devastation to provide nutrients to the soil, force a pinecone to disperse its seeds, or shape the landscape, in contrast to the extreme intensity and size of the fires that are now common. The photographs show us the beauty being lost to human negligence and the climate crisis.

In the U.S., there have been an average of 70,000 wildfires each year for the last 10 years, 90% of them caused by humans. The Ghost Forest has 70 trees, each photo worth 1000 fires.

The Ghost Forest Out of the Ashes

This year has been so hard but I feel really good about my new project! It has been in the study and work it through phase for a quite a while and now I am making good progress. So, I’d like to introduce to you

the Ghost Forest - Out of the Ashes

Last fall, with wildfires raging on the west coast, our sky yellow-gray from smoke, and unable to breathe, I felt sick at the loss of forest lands and began to wonder how I could make something from the destruction. It came to me that by collecting ash from the fires I could then create carbon prints, transforming the charred wood into recorded images of the forests themselves. It is for this reason I use the carbon print process that was invented in 1855 and is considered the most archival of all printing processes as it contains no silver. Carbon, or soot, does not fade. Instead, the trees become the photographs, in an anticipation of natural regeneration after a fire. The process does encourage images to tear and frill on their edges, a property I use in my unique photographs.

Printed as lantern slides, the forest memory is held captive on sheets of glass accentuating both the fragility of life and our precarious position due to climate change. This is the Ghost Forest – Out of the Ashes. When installed, the Ghost Forest moves photography off the wall and into the middle of the room. Hung from the ceiling on pairs of cables that suggest the outline of the trees, the viewer is invited to wander through glimpsing all stages in the life of a forest; small understory flowers, historical logging, dappled light in the trees as well as the aftereffects of fire. 

 My intention is to transform the devastation from the sick panic of needing to evacuate to one of beauty with awareness. So far, I have collected ash from 5 different fires with travel to several other sites scheduled. In the U.S., there have been an average of 70,000 wildfires each year for the last 10 years. On completion the Ghost Forest will have 70 trees, each picture worth a 1000 fires. 

News from Eugene Printmakers - Snippets of Eugene

This summer, as a member of the Eugene Printmakers, you can find me here:

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“Snippets of Eugene"

A Contemporary Art Installation/Performance 

by Eugene Printmakers, July to December, 2020

 BRIDGE Exhibitions of Contemporary Art, Covid-19 Pivot: 

Reflections Space Eugene Exhibitions 

 “Snippets of Eugene" A project details (updeated) by Eugene Printmakers

 What:  Printing/taking rubbings off of manhole covers and grates and other patterns and textures located on Eugene’s city streets, sidewalks and walls. Our prints will be on paper and fabric.

Who: Eugene Printmakers! We will be dressed in workers' coveralls and carry our printing supplies in buckets. (We will conform to all of the health and safety guidelines   related to Covid-19.) We'll invite the public to printing locations that we announce on social media. Everyone is invited to watch our demonstrations as well as participate in printing and take home a print. We will also involve the public by asking for suggestions of interesting patterns in our dear city. We will identify various patterns to print ahead of time and will post a calendar of event dates and locations. 

“Snippets of Eugene” will become mementos of places in our beloved city that the residents of Eugene will be able to take home with them. They will also be invited to experience printing patterns of their own choosing. Our concept is to call attention to the textures and patterns that we live with and often overlook in our everyday lives, and call attention to them as beautiful and compelling prints. The Eugene public will be able to go home with patterns from their favorite places, places that contain memories of events that punctuate their lives. 

When and Where: We will print multiple times between July 1 and December 31. 

We are planning to do two sessions during Visual Arts week in downtown (most likely on Broadway and Saturday Market. We'll be mindful not to block the traffic and be safe.) After that, we'll print in different neighborhood all over Eugene at least once a month. We'll announce our session on our social media and plan to live-feed our printing via Instagram, so anyone can watch us print from anywhere. We'll ask the public to point us to interesting manhole covers, street textures, grates or vent covers in their neighborhoods.

 It's confirmed that we will display the prints on paper in the LCC Downtown campus!  Throughout the course of the project, we will add to our installation in the storefront window to engage the public and for the public to follow the progress of “Snippets of Eugene.” The installation of prints will have a cumulative effect, as memories of beloved places accumulate in our memories as time goes on. 

We will create an online/virtual exhibition that we will post on social media and on our Eugene Printmakers website.

The public will have a chance to purchase “Snippets of Eugene” in the form of printed =T-shirts and bandanas, at each printing performance. The proceeds will be split among Eugene Printmakers, The ArtCity (who has been generously hosting our studio space) and one more local charity. 

We will also raffle off some printed merchandise from each printing event via an Instagram live-feed of the drawing! The purpose of sales and raffles will be to generate interest and excitement for the project and bring more participants to each event. 

How: We use non-toxic, dye-based fabric ink to print street patterns on paper, t-shirts, aprons, patches. (We'll make sure to clean up after ourselves, of course. We are good at that.)

$700 and the proceeds from sale will be used for the materials: (ink, rollers, paper, t-shirts, aprons, our worker’s uniforms, cleaning supplies etc.) for this project.

Why: It's a chance to pay close attention to where we call home. We'll use multiple media outlets to reach out to community members. This is a super FUN, interactive project within our community that will delight the public and lift spirits. It's guaranteed to satisfy a craving for creative, engaging and social activities during this crazy quarantine.

Eugene Printmakers are; Susan Lowermilk, Sean O’Reilly, Minette Roberts, Bronwyn Buffalino, Mika Aono, Jill Overley, Madison Colvin, Sue Schaeffer, Jennifer Andrews, Sarah Grew, Libby Wadsworth, Chelsea Santos

Corona Virus Explorations

I’m tryin to use this time to explore some new techniques. I have been thinking about emulsion on glass, in my case a cyanotype emulsion on glass but I’ve never done it. Then a few days ago it hit me that I should put the emulsion on the metal I paint on. Finally, a way to integrate the photographs and paintings. If this works, it will allow me to do my cycle of time pieces I’ve been thinking about for so long!! So, I’m very excited! Polished some metal pieces to use as testers yesterday. Had to wash them in a mild acid and then scrub them with a mild abrasive cleaner and steel wool to make sure there was no grease or fingerprints.

Stay tuned.

Artist-At-Sea Update!

Well, I’m back from my adventure as artist at sea and it was fantastic! All I had hoped for and more. Now I need to get started making the final cyanotypes but in the meantime, here is an article about my project and the experience written by the journalist, Brett Yager, who was on board as well.

https://newportnewstimes.com/article/sea-science-and-art

And here are the other articles Brett Yager wrote while on shipboard with me:

https://newportnewstimes.com/article/science-at-sea-a-net-full-of-wonder

https://newportnewstimes.com/article/science-at-sea-may-lead-to-student-success

https://newportnewstimes.com/article/platform-for-science-equipment-is-key

https://newportnewstimes.com/article/science-at-sea-the-big-deal-over-tiny-plankton

Sitka's Next Artist at Sea Resident – Introducing Sarah Grew

I’m so excited about this opportunity!!! Stay tuned for details on my project!

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The Research Vessel Atlantis will be my home for 2 weeks this summer.

The Atlantis is about 254 feet long, has 3500 sq ft of research lab space, support a crew of 60 and is host to Alvin, a deep ocean submersible. I can’t wait!

Thank you Sitka and the Science Team.

Here is the blurb from the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology newsletter about me:

We are excited to welcome Sarah Grew as the next Artist at Searesident. Sarah will spend ten days on the oceanic research vessel, Sikuliaq. She will be interacting with a scientific team gathering data on the dynamics of mesozooplankton food webs at different depths and during different seasonal currents off of the Oregon and California coast. This is the fourth Artist at Sea research trip in partnership with Oregon State University and with grant funding from the National Science Foundation. 
Sarah Grew is a painter and photographer whose work expands into installation, collage, printmaking and environmental art. In search of new materials she has become a beekeeper, studied native plant habitats, and worked as an artist-in-residence for a recycling facility in California. Grew relishes discovering places that are new to her and has traveled widely to expand her cultural awareness and enrich her work. She has been awarded a number of residencies including Playa, Joshua Tree National Park, Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Brush Creek, the Ucross Foundation, and the Collegeum Phaenomonologicum in Italy. Recently she installed a large site-specific cyanotype piece at the Umpqua Valley Arts Center and is working on a series of paintings that examine modes of expressing temporality and cycles of time through layering visual art technologies from different periods of time. 
 

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Yikes! Can you believe I forgot to post this before the opening!!!????!!!!

Too busy! Next week I’m going to try and write up the difficulties I had getting this show together because the list is so long it became absurd.

The show looks really good though so I’m really happy. I will also post some video of the show for those who can’t make it.

Upcoming Show at Umpqua Valley Art Center

I’m really excited to announce my upcoming show at the Umpqua Valley Art Center in Roseburg opening in March. I’m going to turn the space into a blue room of images of Oregon, past and present. My cyanotypes are going to go into the windows of the room. I’ve been doing tests with various Japanese papers to find one that works well with cyanotype. The room is HUGE with 10 windows that are 4 feet wind and 7 feet tall!!!

Here is what my paper needs to be able to do;

keeping the image clear

not curl

can withstand washing

won’t tear easily even when wet

will let light through

but not too much light so it will stay legible when the sun hits it

Here are 21 successful 4” x 5” tests, first on the wall and then in the window of my studio. Of course being able to create a 4” x 5” image doesn’t mean the paper is easy to work with when wet once it is 16” x 20”…. A few notes about the process - I used the same negative and exposure time for each test using an exposure unit I built. Cyanotypes are slow compared to some of the UV light sensitive printing methods. Each exposure took 20 mins.

So happy to be so busy creating! More soon!



Open Studio

Finally, Libby and I are doing another Open Studio, so come on down on December 1 from 4 to 6 pm. We look forward to seeing you in the studio!

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Interview with Paul Carter of Eugene Scene

Paul Carter, who is both a photo-journalist as well as a journalist came to my studio last week to interview me for the Eugene Scene. We talked, or rather I ran on and on for a few hours all about my paintings and my photographs. Here is a link. (Also, many kudo's to Paul for getting good photos of me as I am not photogenic!)

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In Sarah Grew’s imagination, time is an elastic concept. It flows into the future, but it just as easily hurtles backward far into the past. And then it folds back on itself to unexpected points in between.

Fortunately, the artist has many tools at her fingertips, because she is both a painter and a photographer who reimagines the two mediums in mind-bending ways....(see rest)

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Focus 2018

I'm so not good at publicity I forgot to post this until today, the day the show comes down!! 5 of my cyanotypes from Joshua Tree in Blue were included in a show at the b.j.spoke gallery in Huntington, NY. The work was selected by Kelly Sidley, Curatorial Assistant in Photography at MoMa in New York. You can see work by all the photographers included in the show here.

 

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Joshua Tree Vistas and Details, grew from my time as Artist in Residence for Joshua Tree National Park, California, in 2017. In my work as a whole I am interested in time and visual expressions of temporality. It is within that spirit that I chose to print these images as cyanotypes for the time-bending mixture of using digital technology to capture an image but to print using a 19th century photographic printing process that pre-dates the invention of a photographic negative. During my stay in Joshua Tree I tried to emulate the grand sweeping vistas of 19th century photography that creates timeless views of nature. The resulting prints harken back to the early days of photography and almost to etchings of the 17th century. Yet, the images are clearly modern in their form, and detail, simply appropriating technique of that earlier time. For me this subtle breaking of the rules of time makes us question how we see and what we remember.

 

Upcoming Residency at Playa

As the rain comes in I am looking forward to going to Playa Artist Residency in Summer Lake Oregon. I was fortunate enough to go there for the month of September back in 2011 and have been yearning to go back ever since. While I know it will be cold in February in the high desert, I look forward to seeing how the light and landscape have changed through time - both seasonal time and yearly time. One difference will be the lake bed itself. In the fall it is a mostly dry expose of caked mud. I wonder how much water there will be this time. While there, I will re-take photographs I took 7 years ago and play with the juxtaposing of the results. I just had a new idea for approaching my cycles of time work and will hope to play with that, I am also looking forward to having an etching press at my disposal.

This is one of my favorite photos from my first residency at Playa

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Photography as Drawing at O'Brien Gallery

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Come join me for the opening reception of Photography as Drawing, my show at O'Brien Photo Gallery in Eugene. For me photography is a facet of my drawing practice. I often take photographs not for the content but for the composition, the line and form. This show will present a range of images, half in black and white, and half with color. 

O'Brien Photo Gallery - 2833 Willamette Ave, Suite B

Reception Saturday November 18th, 3-6pm

 

 

Exhibition Catalog online

Earlier this year my work was included in Views From Oregon: Sixteen Artists. The show was a celebration of the collaboration between the Ucross Foundation and the Ford Family Foundation which helps foster opportunities for many Oregon artists and led to an exhibition catalog being produced. I just discovered that the catalog of the artists who have received fellowships from the Ford Family Foundation for residencies at either Ucross Foundation or Djerassi Resident Artist Program can be seen online here. Somehow the photo of me in the catalog is from my time at Djerassi although my statement and art images are from my time at Ucross. Both were amazing opportunities to work and connect with other artists.

 

Announcing my Solo Show at Lane Community College

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I am so often asked where one can see my work in Eugene. Well, I've solved that for the moment and am having two solo shows this fall. The first, and larger, is at Lane Community College Art Gallery. The show opens on October 30th with a reception and artist talk on November 8th from 3-5pm. This show will focus on my paintings, show casing a number of my Erased Landscape works as well as the Interruptions and works on steel as I explore how to make a static painting into a non-static medium. This is the first time these steel paintings will be out of the studio so it is very exciting.

Come join me!