Sarah Walko
by Luchia Meihua Lee
Walko has a BA in studio art practices from the University of Maryland and an MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design. She writes on contemporary art, literature and film; is an independent curator; and directs Education and Community Outreach at the Visual Art Center of New Jersey. She was an invited panelist on Craft and Horror in Contemporary Art at Brooklyn Academy of Music, visiting artist at Endicott College, Kansas City Art Institute, Roger Williams University and Savannah College of Art and Design and resident artist at the Elizabeth Foundation and I-Park. Her film work includes co-writer, co-director, co- set designer and actor on Make Bright the Arrows with John Ensor Parker and Lux/Nox with Malado Baldwin, Art Director/co- creator/composer on El Cadaver Exquisito, an independent feature film by Victor Ruano. Exhibition highlights include Case Studies at Gallery Aferro (Newark, NJ), Rewoven, Innovative Fiber Arts (Queens Community College, NY), Earth Revisited, Film and Video exhibition on the Manhattan Bridge (DUMBO Brooklyn) Ley Lines, University of Wyoming Art Museum (Laramie, WY), Small Pleasures, Ulrich Museum of Art (Witchita, Kansas), Raising the Temperature, Queens Museum of Art (New York) Preternatural Exhibition, National Museum of Nature (Ottawa Canada).
Artist Statement
I make and arrange text and objects into sculptures, installations and films that create environments where ephemera from the natural world meet antiquities of a mystical science to tell stories. I’m interested in stories and creating a mythological language at the intersection of nature and culture. My work is inspired by literature and by storytelling and I create experiences that allow perceptions to shift from the historical, to the narrative, to the scientific, to the personal, and to the magical. The work is a call to look closer at our interconnectedness and to ask questions both universal and intimate.
