Sarah Smelser
Sarah Smelser
Sarah Smelser received her BA from University of California at Santa Cruz, her MA and MFA from the University of Iowa. She has been an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center; Franz Masereel Center, Artica Bilbao, Kala Art Institute, Jentel Artist Residency, Skopelos Foundation for the Arts, Anchor Graphics, Ballinglen Arts Foundation, and Tamarind Institute. Her work is in such collections as Readers' Digest Association, New York Public Library, Library of Congress, Hallmark Corporate Collection, and Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts.
Smelser has had solo exhibitions at Bridgewater/Lustberg & Blumenfeld in New York City, Kathryn Markel Fine Arts in New York City, Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, MI, Carnegie Mellon University, Bradley University, University of Wyoming, Diablo Valley College, Luther College and Spencer College. Her work has been included in many invitational and juried shows, and been shown at numerous art fairs including Art Frankfurt, Estampa (in Madrid), the Affordable Art Fair in New York, Art Miami, Red Dot Art Fair in New York and Miami, Art Santa Fe, Art Chicago, EDITION Chicago, Boston Print Fair, Baltimore Contemporary Print Fair, Editions/Artists’ Book Fair, and the Los Angeles Art Show.
Smelser's work has been reviewed in Art on Paper: The Journal of Prints, Drawings and Photography, Abstract Art Online, Monotype, Monoprint, & Strappo Ezine and reproduced in New American Paintings.
Smelser is a Professor, the Associate Director of the School of Art at Illinois State University, and a co-founder of Manneken Press with husband Master Printer Jonathan Higgins. Manneken Press is a fine art print publishing venture, currently thriving in Bloomington, IL, publishing the work of artists from around the United States and Colombia. From 2006 to 2008 Smelser acted as President of the Mid America Print Council, a national non-profit organization of artist printmakers and educators.
My latest work uses memory, impression, and my experiences as a traveler to cobble together an invented, non-traditional landscape. I divide and organize space, as a farmer or a quilter might, to explore pattern as well as experiment with density, dynamism, and emptiness.
I am a reluctant transplant from Northern California to Central Illinois, via Wisconsin, Southern California, and West Virginia. Feeling “at home” has become a warped and relative experience. At the same time, I enjoy being a foreigner as I leave my yellow clapboard house in Bloomington, IL to work in New York, Vermont, Wyoming, Belgium, Spain, Greece, Ireland, and my hometown of Berkeley, visiting many other places in between.
I pay close attention to transitions, such as land to water, country to city, soil to cliff, or avenue to highway. The imagery I make is a kind of journal but also evidence of an interior conversation. It is an effort to tread a line between elegant and awkward, deliberate and intuitive, skilled and naïve. The palette, activity, and composition of each work are generated by an urgent curiosity and are sustained by the excitement of discovery in the studio.
