Thanks to Amber Imrie and the amazing cohort of the Carving Connections independent study program at TAAS for the excellent camaraderie these last 5 months. During this time I spent a week immersed in the remarkable geology of Iona, a small island in the Scottish Hebrides. The following vignette of videos and images comes from this experience.
I recently served as a panelist grant reviewer for the National Endowment for the Arts Grants for Art Projects (GAP) in the area of Visual Arts. There were many excellent applicants and 1,135 projects were funded. Congratulations to the recipients and you can read about their good work here.
Joggins Fossil Cliffs
This summer I was awarded a residency in Nova Scotia, Canada. My co-resident Larissa Mellor and I applied together to research the coastal geology of the region, specifically the sea stacks, and to make work adjacent to each other at the Baie St. Marie Jenny Family Compound where we stayed. Many thanks to Maine College of Art and the Jenny Family for making this incredible time possible.
Research sites:
UNESCO World Heritage Site Joggins Fossil Cliffs
Red Rocks at Cape Chignecto Provincial Park
Five Islands Provincial Park, Bay of Fundy
Baie St. Marie, New Edinburgh
Bear Cove
Mavilette Beach Provincial Park
Cape Forchu
Many thanks to CATV Studio Manager & Education Outreach Coordinator Chico Eastridge for capturing my gallery talk on May 13th and putting together this thoughtfully edited piece . Mosaic is on view through June 4th at AVA Gallery.
I’ll be at AVA Gallery on Thursday, May 13th to talk about the work on view in my solo exhibition, Mosaic. For those local to the Upper Valley VT/NH area, you can attend the talk in person! For those tuning in remotely, you can watch on Zoom as we walk through the gallery and talk about materials and processes. Bring your comments and questions and join us!
Zoom link available via AVA Gallery
Hosted in conjunction with the ICA at MECA's Parallax/Geography exhibition. Julie Poitras Santos, Director of Exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA, is joined by artists Elizabeth Atterbury, Tad Beck, Sage Lewis, & Amanda Marchand. | February 11, 2021
It’s been wonderful to receive some great press for Parallax/Geography, on view now through Feb. 28th, 2021. I’m so grateful for the arts writers that are making it happen despite the hurdles of touring shows during a pandemic. The ICA is a luxurious 3.000 square feet and with the limit of 5 viewers at a time, quite easy to stay distanced. The gallery is open Wed-Sun. from 12-5pm.
Sage Lewis, Loupe set: Viking Lander, inkjet prints mounted on rubber, 2021, photograph by Joel Tsui.
The Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art Presents:
Parallax/Geography
and
Tory Fair: Portable Window
On view from January 15 – February 28, 2021
“These two exhibitions taken together,” offered ICA Director Julie Poitras Santos, “provide new perspectives on the representation of landscape. Through the lens of the camera and other framing devices, each artist offers us new ways of imaging the world around us, and demonstrates how our engagement can shift what we see. As many of us spend more time at home again, looking out of the window -- and by extension looking out through the window frame -- becomes an exercise in waiting. These works acknowledge a need for solace within the turbulence, and add context and vitality to our waiting, in essence framing the moment as one of active engagement with new ways of seeing.”
Parallax/Geography exhibits the work of four artists whose use of the photographic medium negotiates the slippery retreat of the real from the camera’s eye, extending the distance and longing that retreat provides. Using experimental processes and conceptually driven structures, these works revisit the classic materials of photography: time, light, space, and substrate. The term parallax refers to the apparent displacement of an object when seen from differing points of view. We use parallax to see: each eye provides a subtly different sightline that our brains then stitch together, creating our perception of depth. Through photographing constructed spaces, reflection, light effects, and distant geology, each of these artists navigate distance, landscape, desire, and time through the medium of photography.
ARTISTS: Elizabeth Atterbury, Tad Beck, Sage Lewis, Amanda Marchand.
Tory Fair: Portable Window premiers Tory Fair’s new video, photographs, and sculpture developed through an intergenerational dialogue with pioneering ecofeminist artist Mary Miss begun in 2018. Fair was inspired to steward some of the seeds Miss planted in the 1970s and is guided by her priorities: “Breathing space, human scale, and first-hand experience”, suggesting that art has the ability to give back and empower these fundamental rights. Reimagining one of Miss’s sculptures in particular, Portable Window (1968), Fair has created mobile framing devices in the form of large wooden wheels that roll through her neighborhood, creating videos that operate as an extension of the sculpture and capture what the sculpture is framing.
“This slow flipping is how I feel right now”, notes Fair. “Observing calm, and even beautiful moments, but then seamlessly moving to a disorienting and dizzy feeling, a rupturing of the frame, and uncertainty.” Framing space usually helps to formalize composition, but these videos frame in order to destabilize and disorient. The landscape tilts and turns. Fair’s playful work opens up several platforms to listen and learn in an unprecedented time of pandemic anxiety and cultural upheaval.
To visit the ICA, stop by 522 Congress Street Wed.-Sun from 12-5pm or register here for a specific time. ICA at MECA is always free. Donations are appreciated.
Wednesday – Sunday, 12:00pm–5:00pm
207.699.5029
Sage Lewis, Cache, 2020
Light Lunch with Sage Lewis
Online Slide Talk + Q&A
Monday, July 27th, Noon (EST)
Suggested Donation: $10
Register for Zoom link at:
www.thehalideproject.org/events
Please feel welcome to join for free, or make a donation of any amount after registering. All donations benefit The Halide Project.
I’ve very excited to be showing my video Unraveling Mars in the upcoming exhibition Through the Looking Glass, at Ugly Duck in London. Details below! Unraveling Mars was edited through the Cuts and Burns Residency at Outpost Artist Resources. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. I am so grateful to Outpost and Lumen for supporting the work.
Dates: 16 - 20 October 2019.
Private View: 15th October 6-9pm. Get your free tickets for the Private View here
Opening Hours: 16-20 October 12-6pm.
Venue: Ugly Duck 47-49 Tanner St, Bermondsey, London SE1 3PL
Lumen presents an exhibition which looks at how technology has influenced our collective view of the Universe.
This exhibition is co-curated by Becky Lyon and Natasha Sabatini.
I am thrilled to participate in Lobby 3, curated by Middlechild Collective members Melissa Vogley Woods and Agnes Ray. This is a different kind of exhibition because it is sited inside a Planned Parenthood Health Center, a secure, non-public space meant for patients and health care providers only. You can see some images of the works in this unique context on Middlechild’s site, and check out the other exhibitions they have produced there.
Video Still
I am very grateful to Outpost Artist Resources for awarding me a Cuts and Burns video editing residency. In June I spent 40 hours editing two video projects with editor extraordinaire and Pratt film/video operations manager and faculty, Matthew Hysell.
The video we completed is an 8 minute loop (still above) showing my hands turning rolls of silver gelatin printed images from the Viking Landers on Mars in the 1970s. The second project which I’m still working on uses digitized images from the Viking Landers to imagine the Lander’s visual scanning process over the course of day and night on Mars.
Springtime view from my apartment in Brooklyn
I have been in a year-long transition of moving to New York! I am happy to finally say that I am settled! This explains why 2018 was a quieter year in terms of exhibitions and studio production. I am still based in both Vermont and New York. My studio and archive of past work is currently packed up in Vermont. But I have materials here in NY that are keeping me busy and moving forward. I am working on a video and an artist book about planetary surfaces (Mars!) and a new series inspired by Alexander von Humboldt. I’m excited to share more as these projects develop, so do stay tuned, and say hello if you’re in the city!
Thanks to April M. Watson, Curator of Photography at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City for including my work in this year's Context 2018 exhibition. The show opens March 16th at Filter Space in Chicago and will remain on view through April 28th.
Opening Reception: March 16 | 6 pm – 9 pm
Location: Filter Space 1821 W. Hubbard St., Ste. 207
Gallery Hours: Monday – Saturday 11 am – 5 pm
Opening Friday, Feb. 2nd, 6-10pm
910 N. 2nd St, Philadelphia, PA 19123
Gravy Studio & Gallery is proud to present Poetics of Place, a reprise of the group exhibition presented at the Satellite Art Show in December 2017 during Miami Art Week. We are excited to bring the work back in Philadelphia for an encore showing.
Poetics of Place is titled in reference to Gaston Bachelard’s book, The Poetics of Space, which explores the phenomenology of architecture in relationship to the lived experience. This photographic exhibition examines humanity’s innate link with place historically, geographically, economically and culturally. Each artist, in their own way, explores a “topophilic" response to the nature of place. Artists included in this exhibition are: Rebekah Flake, Mark Havens, Neil Kohl, Sage Lewis, Ben Riley, Amy Ritter, Krista Svalbonas and Katie Tackman. Gravy also collaborated with designers Permanent Drift to create a special exhibition catalog which can be purchased at the exhibit along with other books, zines, and prints they have created.
If you are traveling to Miami for the art fairs, look for my work on view in Poetics of Place presented by Gravy Studio and Gallery at the Satellite Art Show. My series of flattened paper sculptures called Thin Sections and an installation called Orbital Range will be on view in the Satellite Art Show's abandoned hotel on Miami's North Beach.
I'll also have three related collage/assemblages in Gravy's flat files available for viewing as part of the show. While you're there, pick up a copy of the limited edition 36-page catalogue made for our exhibit by Permanent Drift.
Opening December 1, 2017
5-7 pm
In their recent bodies of photo-based works, Justin Levesque and Sage Lewis look to the edges of nature for inspiration and meaning. Levesque investigates the Arctic Circle as both ancient and fleeting, as it adjusts to climate change and human interventions. Lewis explores her personal histories via the rock and mineral formations of the desert. Rather than presenting these environments as solitary and barren, however, the artists imbue them with poetic abundance.
Please join us at Akari for the First Friday opening on December 1st from 5-7 pm. Drinks and light refreshments will be served.
Akari Salon
195 Middle Street
Portland, ME 04101
PROCESS / Art at Akari showcases and sells the work of local contemporary artists in a non-traditional setting. The series is organized by Anne Marie Purkey Levine of AMPL Art Consulting and is hosted by Akari Salon.
Visiting Artist
On October 2nd I'll be giving a talk about my work at Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY. Many thanks to the Hartwick Art & Art History Department for sponsoring my lecture. If you're in the area, please come!