Artist Sarah Marshall will present a series of prints entitled “Us to Them and Back Again” at Walnut Gallery from June 10th to July 30th. An opening reception and gallery talk will be held Friday, June 10th, at 7 pm. Admission is free and open to the public. Sarah will also join the gallery as an artist in residence during the months of June and July. During her stay, she will conduct a community print project involving classes and workshops where participants will help create unique art prints that will be displayed in the gallery as part of an evolving community exhibition. More information, including dates and times for the workshops, will be posted online at walnutgallery.org
and the gallery’s Facebook page (facebook.com/walnutgallery).
The reception is being sponsored by The University of Alabama College of Arts & Sciences.
Sarah Marshall is an award-winning, nationally exhibited artist, and printmaking instructor at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. One of her more recent series, “Us to Them and Back Again”, is a unique exhibit for Walnut Gallery in that it features printmaking installations applied directly to the walls in addition to framed art prints. “This work explores flight as a metaphor for escape, belief, longing, and growth,” Marshall explains. “The winged creatures that populate these images exist in a state of flux. As they change their skins, losing and gaining attributes, they demonstrate the fragility and impermanence of the self and the many ways we respond to our environment.” Those themes of fragility and impermanence took on an unexpected and unfortunate layer of relevance after Sarah’s home was directly hit by the tornado that swept through Tuscaloosa this past April. While Sarah and her family are safe, their home was destroyed in the storm. “It’s overwhelming thinking about all of the lives that were affected by the tornadoes,” said gallery director Mario Gallardo. “This is the second exhibit we’ve had where the artists and the art itself have been affected by the storms. A key part of this series that Sarah has put together is the idea of adaptation and responding to one’s environment, so I think it’s a positive idea of rebuilding and growing, even after great adversity and chaos.” Sarah Marshall will be on hand for the opening reception on Friday, June 10 at 7 PM, where she will conduct a gallery talk and answer visitor’s questions.
In addition to the exhibit, Sarah will be joining Walnut Gallery as an artist in residence during the months of June and July for a community print project to be displayed at the gallery as part of an evolving exhibit. There will also be printmaking workshops and classes offered during June and July. “Printmaking is a fascinating art-form full of interesting processes and methods,” Gallardo said. “It’s also a medium that maybe your average person doesn’t know a lot about in relation to, say, drawing or painting. This is going to be a great opportunity for anyone in the community who hasn’t really learned a lot about printmaking or who would like to see some current, contemporary methods in action.” Dates and times for the workshops will be posted online at walnutgallery.org and facebook.com/walnutgallery. The exhibit and residence program is sponsored by The University of Alabama College of Arts & Sciences. Walnut Gallery is also seeking donations to assist in Sarah’s residence.
About Sarah Marshall
Sarah Marshall, the daughter of a reference librarian and a composer, grew up near Baltimore, Maryland. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Carnegie Mellon University in 1992 and, in 1999, her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Iowa. Influenced by interests such as language, reading and book objects, architecture, and biological science, Sarah focuses on the processes of printmaking and drawing. Her works on paper show organic forms that become portraits and characters; repeated in various environments, these characters examine our ideas about decision-making and the ways we treat each other. Sarah is currently employed as an Associate Professor of Art at The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
About “Us to Them and Back Again” in the artist’s own words
Through my work, I explore the gulf between two experiences of the world; one presented daily to the senses, the other an unseen collection of belief, imagination, and memory. I position these experiences together not to resolve them, but to consider the relationship between them. I seek to make visible the invisible; the spaces between objects and events, and our awkwardness in describing them, are the subtext of my work.
My prints and drawings reference the physical world through plant forms, animal forms, and the figure. Manipulated text, language, and translation, suggest the complexities of human thought and behavior. Sometimes lyrical and sometimes abrupt, the work ranges from diagrammatic line drawings to elaborate, decorative elements. I cut apart and recombine source images, abstracting them through simplification, repetition, and layering. Layers may contradict each other or work together, linking the internal and external worlds.
Repetition is at the heart of printmaking, but my attraction to the multiple comes from the possibility of infinite variation as much as infinite repeatability. Forms recur in my work suggesting narrative or, simply, movement through time. This recurrence also shows how an image changes as it is transposed into different media. I am more concerned with similarity than with sameness, and a varied family of related images often replaces the edition in my studio practice.