Archive 192 at the UMBC Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery, Baltimore

Cover image: Claudia Fährenkemper, Sodium Chloride / Natriumchlorid, from the series Habitus, 2003. Gelatin silver print. © Claudia Fährenkemper.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) houses the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery which serves as one of the principal art galleries in the region. Items from the Special Collections Department, as well as art and artifacts from all over the world, are displayed in challenging and informative exhibitions for the University community and the public. I’m honored to be part of the Archive 192 exhibition. Many thanks to Louie Palu and Chloe Coleman!

On view February 10 – May 31, 2025

Archive 192 is an independent archive dedicated to preserving and celebrating abstractionist works by women photographers established in 2015 by photographer Louie Palu and photo editor Chloe Coleman. The archive, which now holds over 200 prints, books and ephemera, challenges conventional narratives of the history of photography that center documentary realism and aims to counter underrepresentation of work by women in institutional collections.

This exhibition presents a selection of photographs from Archive 192 that explore the diverse techniques of abstraction, including framing, cropping magnification, and altering chemical processes. These visual strategies present unfamiliar views of real-world objects and change the appearance of photographic prints to create non-representational images. The photographs on view also represent the array of photographic processes employed by photographers in pursuit of abstraction over more than a century, including cyanotypes, C-prints, tintypes, and Polaroid color instant prints. Related ephemera including publications, artist books, and posters document the evolution of abstractionism in photography and the political contexts, such as the feminist movement, that impact women working within the medium.

Assembly at the ICA at MECAD

I’m thrilled to be included in Assembly at the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art & Design.

On View: February 7 – April 6, 2025

• Reception: Friday, February 7 from 5:00 – 8:00 pm, ICA

• Assembly Artist Conversations: February 8, 2:00–3:00 pm, ICA

• Kiko Aebi - Visiting Artist Lecture: February 10, 12:00–1:00 pm, Osher Hall, MECA&D

About the exhibition:

Juried by Kiko Aebi, Katz Curator at the Colby College Museum of Art, Assembly: 2025 Maine College of Art & Design Alumni Triennial highlights a selection of work representing the breadth of Maine College of Art & Design’s programs, including BFA, MFA, MAT, and Salt graduates.

An assembly is a group of people gathered for a common purpose. It is also the action of joining together constituent parts to become something more. The sixteen artists included in this triennial alumni exhibition—many of whom rubbed shoulders in MECA&D studios and classes—constitute the former. Their various working methods and creative strategies informed by their time here are a testament to the latter.

Across a wide range of mediums—including painting, drawing, photography, textile, ceramics, sculpture, artist’s books, and documentary reportage—these artists recompose materials and ideas drawn from disparate contexts to unsettle aspects of our daily lives and the places we inhabit that often go overlooked and unscrutinized. Shown in concert, numerous thematic harmonies arise and circulate between the works on view, among them the relationship between intimacy and domesticity; the fraught status of landscape and the environment; and the entangled histories of art, science, and medicine. Spiritualism, the occult, and the conflation of reality and popular culture are also prominent currents running through the exhibition.

Surveying some of the major continuities and evolutions patterning contemporary art today, this exhibition is staged as a polyphonic assembly, bringing together recent work by artists whose individual perspectives and reverberant insights and styles speak to our present. As viewers, we are invited to consider new strategies for seeing and relating to the world around us.

— Kiko Aebi

Iona Sequence for The Alternative Art School

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.

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NEA Visual Arts Panel

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.

Baie St. Marie Residency, Nova Scotia

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

Artist Profile for Mosaic

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.

Mosaic: Artist Talk May 13th, 6pm

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

Mosaic opens April 30th

Sage Lewis

Mosaic

April 30-June 4 at AVA Gallery, Lebanon, NH

Artist talk Thursday, May 13th

Tue – Fri 11-6
Sat + Sun 11-4
and by appointment
Closed Mondays

Conversation with the Artists: Parallax/Geography

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

Recent reviews for Parallax/Geography

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.

Portland Press Herald: Experimental photography on display in joint exhibits at MECA, Jorge S. Arango (Jan. 2021)

Forbes: Challenge Your Notions Of Photography And Landscape With Two Exhibitions Exploring Decades Of Processes And Ideology, Natasha Gural (Jan. 2021)

Artist Conversation: Parallax/Geography

Sage Lewis, Loupe set: Viking Lander, inkjet prints mounted on rubber, 2021, photograph by Joel Tsui.

Join us for a conversation with the artists in Parallax/Geography
Thursday, February 11, 2021, at 5:30 PM on Zoom

ARTISTS: Elizabeth Atterbury, Tad Beck, Sage Lewis '04, Amanda Marchand
On view from January 15 – February 28, 2021

Register for the Artist Conversation

Parallax/Geography Opens January 15

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

Virtual Artist Talk on July 27th with a focus on analogue processes

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.

Through the Looking Glass opening Oct. 15th in London

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. 

PRESS RELEASE

Lobby 3 Curated by Middlechild Collective

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.

Cuts and Burns Video Editing Residency

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.

Moving to NY!

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!

Filter Photo opens March 16th in Chicago

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

Poetics of Place opens in Philadelphia Feb. 2nd

Opening Friday, Feb. 2nd, 6-10pm

Gravy Studio & Gallery

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.