A little over a year ago, I began making art again after graduate school, but very slowly. At the time, my art practice felt distant. One day I sat down with my art therapist and started slowly cutting paper. No big plans. Just a quiet ritual to remind myself that I could still make things. Fast forward to June 2025, and I am launching two limited-edition prints….but first, a very long note on process and the practice of patience:
The papers I started cutting in therapy were cyanotypes I created in 2021 during an eco-photography class at SMU. My sister was visiting that week, and we made them together, sitting on the grass outside the Bush Library, arranging rocks and blades of grass on photo paper in the sun. It was one of those rare, grounding days you don't realize is a core memory until much later.
now lives in Nepal for the Peace Corps, and the time we spent in Texas together means even more to me with the distance between us.
As I worked with those cut-outs, I began layering them with a translucent pink fiber I created from a screenshot of a video I made during my MFA. The video combined overlapping clips of wintering trees in NYC, mycelium and slime molds, and neural networks I found online. I pushed the color until it became this electric, improbable pink. A joyful color that gave me energy.
At the same time, I found myself collecting small rocks—on walks through New York City and hikes in the Hudson Valley. I didn’t really know why. It became a kind of intuitive practice: picking up interesting shapes. Feeling grounded by having a ritual of repetition.
Then I returned to the bright pink fishing line. The thread I’ve used before to suspend 20+ pound branches in a gallery for another installation (probably a nod to my dad, a devoted outdoorsman). I love how it looks delicate but is deceptively strong—able to hold surprising amounts of weight. That tension between fragility and force. I started knitting with it, but that didn’t quite work out. A bunch of disparate projects that felt like “dead ends.”
My installation is called “Throughlines: the body as bridge, the thread as practice.” In the space, stones and paper forms will hang in suspended tension with that pink fishing line. The rocks hover above—the weight hanging above the delicate cyanotypes, backed with pink fiber, swaying slightly. It's an inversion of what we expect: the heavy held by the light. The natural, earthy textures and colors are paired with the vibrant and synthetic.
You will move through the installation slowly. It will invite a kind of choreography—one shaped by my background in dance, but also by a family of women who love arranging spaces, who understand how the placement of things can carry feeling.
In the back of the space, a small white box with a peephole houses a looping stop-motion video built from 350+ scans of the paper and thread. Each frame quite literally represents a moment of patience and pause (my scanner is not very fast)…the practice of assembly. See a snippet of the video below:
As part of this project, I’m partnering with an art printer in Brooklyn, Positive Print Lab, to offer two limited-edition 11”x14” prints on a lovely, textured, archival-quality paper (yes, I am a paper geek). These prints are derived from scans that make up part of the video from the installation. They hold the same elements: paper, thread, color, balance, meditation. You can find them here if you'd like to bring a piece of the installation into your own space. I may be biased, but they are very fun to look at and the shapes jump off the page.
Note: They are not being sold framed because I believe framing is a very personal augmentation to a piece of art.
This whole installation has been slow to form. It’s taught me a lot about trusting the artistic process without the pressure of productivity. It has required a lot of patience as it takes form…and a surprising amount of pink (for a girl who doesn’t consider herself to be “girly,” I certainly love the color in my art). Stay tuned for the final installation.
The process has been about the joy that emerges quietly, in fragments. The kind that builds when you let it take its time. I'm so grateful for this work and the space it’s created, for the places it weaves together, and for the meaning each piece of the work holds for me.
Thanks for reading. Keep moving, keep making, and tell me what you’re working on.
"A quiet ritual to remind me that I could still make things." Love this so much Sara! Shooting my grad film this week, and this was a perfect piece to read right before <3
"A quiet ritual to remind me that I could still make things." Love this so much Sara! Shooting my grad film this week, and this was a perfect piece to read right before <3