about sarah

I am a ceramic artist and teacher living and working on Cape Cod. I hold a B.S. in Studio Art from Skidmore College, and an M.S. in Art Education from The College of Saint Rose with a concentration in ceramics.

After working in an American Craft retailer, and having two beautiful children, jumping back into the creative world was a leap of faith. What I rediscovered was the art of play. I concentrated on process, trying many new things for the sheer fun of it, until something clicked, then explored that line, while continuing to let myself invent.

I have always worked best when I set up tension and complexity, jumping between disparate ideas. I tend to get bored easily, and focus better if I can move from piece to piece, rather than sitting, staring at one thing all day long. Over the past two years this has led to two distinct bodies of work.

I am working on bas relief carved lanterns, garden pieces, and functional cups and bowls using imagery inspired by plant forms. With these pieces, I enjoy seeing how the appearance of positive and negative space changes when the work is viewed during the day, and at night, illuminated from the inside.

The other group of work employs the sgrafitto technique, in which a thin layer of clay, engobe or underglaze is applied over a clay body, and carved away to create an image. Many of these pieces include quotes from the small children in my life. They are still young enough to have their very own, and often bizarre, sense of how the world works, and their very own beautifully descriptive ways of sharing ideas. These moments are so fleeting, that I feel like I am preserving a piece of time.