Book and Print Gallery
Urban Deer
Press
Who is Connectwork?
Artist's
Statement
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Artist's
Statement
Living between two cultures is a balancing act, often of opposite ideas and experiences. My life began on the other side of the world in a major coastal city in Australia, and as an adult, I immigrated to the USA. The dual concepts of ocean and land, old and new, open space and cityscape, are distinct in my work. I visualize my art amidst this landscape of duality, focusing on the unifying central metaphor of the shoreline.
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The metaphysical shoreline is much more than an inspiration or a Jungian-derived symbol. It is the thin line between my old world and my life in the USA. It is representative of the barrier between human senses and experience, and an ocean of ideas, mystery, imagination and the human experience.
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As an artist I work in seemingly contrasting methods to create artists' books. The letterpress and the etching press are often employed alongside online technologies such as the QR code, bringing the old and the new together in my work. My books often dwell on the dislocated person along this shoreline, questioning the effectiveness of our social structures; looking at place and the displaced.
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My work draws upon my experience living between two countries and a rich childhood heritage of oral history and storytelling. Centered in a water culture family of naval, ocean merchants and boat builders, the women in my family were the keepers of memories. Stories of forebears were past down through the generations in songs and tales. This tradition of storytelling is continued in my books where there is a history of oral tradition, and multiple tales that form a more complex picture.
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Biography
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." -- Albert Einstein
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Imagination, memories and dreams are the basis for much of Sara A Friedman's artwork. Combining various methods of printmaking, Sara abstracts tidal pool and water current forms from her childhood, spent along the waterways of the harbor and it's inlets of Sydney, Australia. Mindful of limited resources she often works with unconventional materials such as recycled woods or discarded ephemera, as commentary on consumerism.
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Sara was born in Sydney, Australia in the 1970s, where she grew up with a family whose skills were deeply rooted in art. After relocating to the East Coast of the USA, she began to work with various media to find artistic expression. Sara has balanced a life and professional photography career in Australia and the US and her work can be found in both countries. Sara plans to exhibiting her printmaking work and artists' books in local art centers in collaborative and solo shows.
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Sara's recent show in Washington DC, followed her graduation in 2016 from the GW-Corcoran Art and the Book Masters Program, and focused on PTSD from domestic violence from the perspective of a child, expressed in a dual-tale long concertina artists' book. Another recent show at Artomatic Frederick used interactive prints to encourage the audience to examine the pros and cons of living in the Digital Age and question their consumption in both world.
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Sara's artwork draws from her experience as an immigrant and dual-citizen. This sense of duality is often employed as a concept to illuminate her artwork, which has at its core, the notion of looking beyond the surface of subjects to find the beauty of the everyday and the greater truths of our social existence.
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