© 2023 Sara Jones
Thank you to my good friend (and former Public Art Fund colleague!) Nora Gomez-Strauss for the thoughtful questions and to The Fold for the opportunity to share more about my work! Please visit to read the interview and to learn more about the 2 sides of my practice.
All Votes Matter, woven paper and vintage postcard, 2020
I was invited to participate in “Drawing Districts,” an exhibition organized by TSA_PDF and curated by Suzanne Dittenber. Artists were asked to create a work using the free typeface “Ugly Gerry.” This font was created by two Chicago designers, Ben Doessle and James Lee, and the 26 letters are based on outlines of American Congressional districts created by gerrymandering.
In the 2020 electoral season, this exhibition highlights districts drawn to induce specific results, a reminder of the underlying layer of complexity in our political system that must be engaged, investigated, and questioned. The power we have as a democracy springs from our ability to inquire, research, and understand beneath the surface.
Artists included in “Drawing Districts” are Jarrod Beck, Margaret Curtis, Naomi Falk, Ben Grosser, Anna Helgeson, Sara Jones, and Marshall Roemen.
TSA_PDF is a series of printable exhibitions curated by our members. People are invited to download and print these 8.5” x 11” works on their home printers and share their “install shots,” which are shared on Instagram and the TSA website.
Silent Music is a mixed media exhibit by artist Kara Smith that investigates the codes and patterns of player piano music rolls. The focus of the show is twofold; to represent how sounds can be experienced visually in a variety of tactile mediums, and to push the barriers of language and communication in new directions. Smith has experimented with how to represent these visual scores and interpret them through a selection of different mediums, with an emphasis on re-introducing the hand back into the process. Curated by Brooklyn-based artist and curator Sara Jones, the exhibit includes paintings, prints and fiber arts, as well as a sound piece by Berkshire-based musician, Wes Buckley.
About the Artist
Kara Smith is a Hudson Valley, NY-based artist and art educator. She received a MA in Art Education from Brooklyn College, and a BFA from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. She has been awarded residencies at MASS MoCA, The Vermont Studio Center, Brooklyn Art Space, and Drop, Forge and Tool. She has exhibited regularly throughout the Northeast, and is currently a Teaching Artist and Program Coordinator at Community Access to the Arts (CATA), an arts organization that provides visual and performing arts workshops to individuals with disabilities.
Two of my paintings on left, with a painting by Paige Beeber, right.
I am thrilled to be included in the group show C H R O M A N T I C S, curated by Paolo Arao at Sweet Lorraine Gallery. Artists included are: Melissa Capasso, Elizabeth Meggs, Katerina Lanfranco, Paige Beeber, and Sara Jones.
CHROMANTICS
October 13-29, 2018
Sweet Lorraine Gallery
The show will be up during Gowanus Open Studios, so please be sure to see it if you are touring around!
I will be participating in Gowanus Open Studios this year! Please come visit me in my studio at TI Studios (183 Lorraine Street, 3rd floor, studio 64). I will have new work and lots and lots of drawings on view and for sale! I look forward to seeing you!
GOWANUS OPEN STUDIOS
October 20-21, 2018
noon-6 p.m.
I am very excited to announce that I have a solo exhibition, Boundaries, opening on June 8, 2018, 6-8 p.m. at Sweet Lorraine Gallery in Brooklyn. I would love to see you there.
Here is my statement about the work:
My work engages history through the reimagining of collective memory, family archives, and the psychic resonances embedded in public and private spaces. Long rooted in textiles, fabrics and thread, my practice currently foregrounds the metaphorical power of these materials to reference the way we talk about narratives and history: we “weave stories” and “connect the threads.” Beyond these specific allusions, my work investigates metaphor as a mode of movement with the potential to collapse distance and difference, revealing the ways that history itself is metaphoric by dislocating the viewer from the certain here of the present to the uncertain elsewhere of the past. This ongoing project began with a reenactment of my ancestors’ journey to Europe in 1844 reconstructed from family archives. The question of re-enactment is central to my project, as there is an intrinsic absence contained within the act. Grasping at that absence and the potential narrative and memory that it contains fascinates me and drives my project. The philosopher George Santayana famously argued, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” and through this work I strive to disrupt the violence of repetition by excavating the memory traces and echoes that have been lost between lines in order to shape new narratives of possibility.
I'm very excited to be included in this exhibition, Light in the Dark, at Sears Peyton Gallery in Chelsea. From the press release:
"In a year in which many Americans endured a daily battering of cynical political gestures with toxic repercussions, Sears-Peyton’s exhibition Light in the Dark collects a group of artworks that offer a darkly humorous and guardedly optimistic tonic for our difficult times. Curated by artist Karin Schaefer, the exhibition features small-scaled contributions by twenty artists advocating for the core social, cultural, and environmental commitments the Trump administration daily disavows. (Sad!) Whether referencing social justice movements, sustainable environmental policies, diverse cultural production, or the importance of real news, Light in the Dark represents a community resisting the cynically corrosive powers of our time and seeking avenues for reinvigorating a more constructive approach to the challenges we face. In Sara Jones’ 2017 Washington Monument, the eponymous priapic monument has been excised from a vintage postcard, seemingly broken in half and flipped upside-down, where it hangs below the postcard’s bottom edge, bloodied at its breaks in pathetic impotence."
Washington Monument, 2017, vintage postcard and thread on paper
I will have several drawings available with Ground Floor Gallery at the Affordable Art Fair in Manhattan this week/weekend. The fair opens Wednesday, Sept. 13 and is located at the Metropolitan Pavilion on 18th St. Thanks to Ground Floor Gallery for inviting me!
PROVENANCE
Ground Floor Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
On View: June 8th - July 9th, 2017
Artist Reception: Thursday, June 22nd, 6 - 8:30pm
I am excited to be included in the exhibition Provenance at Ground Floor Gallery, featuring artists Ai Campbell, Sara Jones and Anne Mourier-DeFalco. The exhibition is an investigation of unfamiliar family histories through travel, artmaking and conjecture.
Provenance illustrates each artist’s attempt to demystify an estranged familial connection through explorations both in and outside of the studio space. By revisiting unknown or misunderstood identities and destinations of yore, Campbell, Jones and DeFalco intimately craft tender, mixed-media portraits that veer fluidly between the biographical and autobiographical. As a result, the exhibition emerges as a real time platform where hazy ancestral ties are elucidated and reimagined.
A few weeks ago I started a new series of works on paper in response to current events and my frustration, anger, and fear in hearing the news every day. I had collected several vintage postcards of Washington, D. C. and began to incorporate them into the work I was making. Each piece reflects a specific event or news item that I needed to react to. Simultaneously, the curators at Ground Floor Gallery, Krista Saunders Scenna and Jill Benson were conceiving an exhibition about the attacks on the press and the First Amendment, and I was happy to have 3 of my pieces included.
Marked Urgent is an exhibition at Ground Floor Gallery in Brooklyn. Artists were invited to submit work on paper traditionally used for any and all types of correspondence and communication. Sales of the artworks will support the Committee to Protect Journalists, “an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide” and defends “the right of journalists to report the news without fear of reprisal.”
The exhibition got a bit of press:
Domesticated: Exploring the internal conflicts of household responsibilities, gender roles, creative expression, and ambition
An exhibit curated by Abby Graf Subak, Director of Arts Gowanus
October 15, 2016-January 28, 2017
The Old Stone House at Washington Park
336 3rd Street, Brooklyn (between 3-4 Sts. and 4-5 Aves.)
Exhibiting Artists: Liza Cassidy, Paul Gagner, Sara Jones, Tara Kopp, Susan Newmark, Abby Subak, and Jessica Weiss.
The exhibiting contemporary artists struggle with balancing the upkeep of their daily lives and quotidien chores, and their desire to make a contribution to a broader society. These artworks explore these tensions through examining relationships to the space we live in, architecturally, decoratively, and psychically. They reflect a tension between interior and exterior, literally and figuratively, and the struggle to find balance and respect for each. They also grapple with the interior psychological space of home and gender roles. Literal depictions of household chores are found in the works of Liza Cassidy, Tara Kopp, and Abby Graf Subak. Decorative elements of the home represent confinement and sometimes confusion, yet also beauty, in the work of Sara Jones, Susan Newmark, and Jessica Weiss. Attempts to make sense of the physical and architectural space is found in the work of Sara Jones and Paul Gagnier. The repetition of domestic and decorative patterns permeates the show, paralleling the repetition of daily chores that are never finished, as artists seek to create meaning from this repetition, particularly in the works of Liza Cassidy, Sara Jones, Susan Newmark, Jessica Weiss.
For the month of July, I am participating in a project called everydaystudio, run by artist Alison Owen. From the project website: "Everydaystudio involves 90 artists, writers, and other creative people who have agreed to create and share something with Owen each day. She then looks for the threads that connect different artists, and makes them visible in daily curations. This project explores the ways that artmaking can be a long and rambling conversation among creative people, where ideas surface and resurface in different practices."
Spell, acrylic and gouache on panel, 7" x 11", 2016
Small Works
Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 30th 7-9pm
On view through August 4th, 2016
“Looking through one thousand images was a dream-come-true, until I had to eliminate well over 900 of them. This was not my first time at the rodeo, but editing, shaping, and finalizing an exhibition is never an easy process. So many works have merit and any exhibition can take countless directions. Many of the artists who received rejections had several works flagged until the final round, when imagery, themes, and techniques began to appear in dialogue, taking me in a direction I had not previously anticipated. There is no overarching theme aside from the fact that the pieces spoke to me and began to speak to each other after countless rounds of viewing. In the end, I chose works that made me ask questions, look at media, read titles, and want to know more. I longed to see them in person and they begged to hang next to one another.”
- Heather Darcy Bhandari, Guest Curator
Participating artists:
Brandy Bajalia - George Belcher - Caroline Board - Greg Burak
Emily Burns - Jessica Cannon - Melissa Capasso - Noor Chadha
Cecile Chong - Sarah Comfort - Jaynie Crimmins - Elliot Deal
Mark Dustin - Rina Dweck - Lauren Gidwitz - Carly Glovinski
Antonietta Grassi - Jane Lafarge Hamill - Terence Hannum - Fukuko Harris
Cory Imig - Sara Jones - Owen Karrel - Annika Klein - Amanda Konishi
Heidi Leitzke - Keith Lemley - Jeanette Levy - Taylor Loftin
Mary Malcolm - Maess - Mark Mann - Max Manning - Tali Margolin
Ayumi Matsuba - Taryn McMahon - Laura Mosquera - Sidney Mullis
Alexis Neider - Janet Olney - Ryan Oskin - Peter Patchen - Jessica Perelman
Victor Perez - Mel Prest - Kaveri Raina - James Rose - Annette Rusin
Seth Scantlen - Jenine Shereos - Sophia Sobers - Travis Southworth - Raphael Fenton Spaid
Marcy Sperry - Todd Stong - Mike Tan - Ann Tarantino - Scott Teplin
Zipporah Camille Thompson - Barbara Campbell Thomas - Victoria Tinsley - Rachel Walker
Ripley Whiteside - Julia Whitney Barnes - Curtis Widem - Quay Quinn Wolf - Jack Wood
Maya Pindyck selected 20 artists to create visual responses to the poems in her new book, Emoticoncert. The artworks will be on view at the Emoticoncert Book Launch at Berl's Poetry Shop in DUMBO on March 24th. The work is also viewable online here. Participating artists: Fletcher Boote, Kiran Chandra, Jamie Emerick, Kay Gordon, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Jessica Houston, Sara Jones, Melora Kuhn, Mary Lamboley, Haley Mellin & Bob Mellin, Dorota Mytych, Nurit Eini-Pindyck, Carla Repice, Elise Schonhowd, Dasha Shishkin, Kirsten Stromberg, Tereza Swanda, Rebecca Szeto, Angela Rose Voulgarelis, Andrea Wenglowskyj.
I have a piece in this year's Art F City Auction and Benefit. Support art writers, independent art criticism, and ambitious artist commissions by bidding on the amazing artworks in the Art F City auction. This year's SPRNG BRK themed benefit event will take place on March 15th at Otto's Shrunken Head in New York City. Tickets to the benefit are available here.
detail from Inconvenient Responsibility, which will be included in the exhibition.
I am pleased to share that I will be participating in "Made in Gowanus", an exhibition featuring 5 artists who have been nurtured by the Gowanus arts community in Brooklyn. The opening reception will be Friday, October 16th to coincide with Beat Nite Gowanus (co-sponsored by Norte Maar and Arts Gowanus) and the kick-off to Gowanus Open Studios weekend!
Made in Gowanus
October 8-November 8, 2015
Ground Floor Gallery
Opening Reception: October 16, 6-10 pm
Participating Artists: Natale Adgnot, Ai Campbell, Veronique Gambier, Sara Jones and Sui Park
It's been a crazy year, and after losing my studio this summer, I decided to start a "Drawing a Day" project in order to keep my practice active. Since Labor Day (September 7th), I have been doing one drawing a day that I have been posting on Instagram and Tumblr. It's been really rewarding so far, and I plan to keep up the momentum! Please follow along, if you'd like!
Ball State University School of Art's Atrium Gallery is pleased to present “The Farthest Plane: Explorations in Abstraction." This group exhibition features the work of five visual artists working with abstract forms and processes: Rachel Hellman (Terre Haute, Indiana), Sara Jones (Brooklyn, NY), Sage Lewis (Tunbridge, VT), Justin Quinn (St. Cloud, MN) and Joshua Welker (Upland, IN).
This exhibition includes 2-D and 3-D works that are drawn, painted, photographic and built. Pattern, line, color, texture and spatial planes are explored and propelled into new combinations and structures by these artists. Please join us on September 3rd from 4-6pm for an opening reception and gallery talks by artists Rachel Hellman and Joshua Welker.
Gallery Hours: Tues - Fri, 10-4pm, Sat 1-4pm
Free and open to the Public
Atrium Gallery, Art & Journalism Building
School of Art, Ball State University
The Very Long Beginning, acrylic, thread, panel, and stretcher bars, 58” x 68” x 42”, 2013
I'm excited to have several works included in The Farthest Plane in the Atrium Gallery at Ball State University in Indiana. The exhibition opens August 25th and will be on view until September 19th. The artists in the show are: Rachel Hellmann, Sara Jones, Sage Lewis, Justin Quinn, and Joshua Welker.
Emmy Mikelson, Threshold Composition no. 30, 9"x12", oil and ink on panel, 2015
I am curating the next show at Transmitter in Bushwick, Brooklyn!
EACH ELLIPSE INCLUDES A POINT
Janine Biunno, Emmy Mikelson and Parsley Steinweiss
August 14–September 13, 2015
Opening Reception: Friday, August 14, 6-9pm
Open Weekends 12-6pm
The work in this exhibition deals with transitions, boundaries, and voids, drawing attention to the liminal spaces in-between reality and illusion, as a means to destabilize the perception of physical space, digital representation, and architecture.
Both materially and conceptually, the artists in this show are engaged with questions of synthetic imitation, copying, reproduction, subjectivity, perception, boundaries, physical relationships and the after-image.
