This article was first published in MaryJanesFarm Magazine, September 2006.
MARILYN: “About fifteen miles south of Moscow is the small town of Genesee. My husband and I rented some storage units there, and on various visits to drop off and pick up art, we noticed an interesting store- front. It looked to us as though there might be a nascent art community there …”
When we peeked in the storefront, the first thing we saw were large, three- dimensional figures constructed out of various materials and cut and sewn in idiosyncratic ways. When Sara answered the door, I realized that I had actually met her (and her daughter Heidi) several times at local gallery openings. We were invited in for tea. We admired her art and gradually found out more about her.
Sara grew up during the Depression and moved with her family from her birthplace in California to her grandmother’s farm in Texas, then back to California with stops along the way. During World War II, she met her husband-to-be, and in 1947 moved to Pocatello, Idaho, where she raised three children.
Because of her Depression-era upbringing, Sara had always made things from available materials … sewing dresses, making toys for her children. It was an easy step into making art. And it was there in Pocatello where she signed up for art and anthropology classes at Idaho State University. She didn’t stay for a degree, but found classes that interested her … particularly in anthropology.
In the early 1970s, Sara moved to Genesee, where her oldest daughter lives. She ran an antiques shop and bought and restored old Victorian houses, but most importantly, she painted and sewed and tinkered and made art. One was as likely to see her in a tool belt as in her apron. But, she confessed, she always
missed Pocatello. So in 1994, Sara moved back, where she continues to make art … both sculptures and paintings. She even makes wonderful figures in bread as gifts for her friends, and digs and pit-fires clay, making mysterious, almost functional, objects.
For an exhibition of her work in Pocatello, she wrote, “The visual language of myth and dream, the symbolic content, and dramatic episodes all find their way into my painting. I usually begin a composition by brushing in a few colors. Sometimes I add layers of color for days before a form, a figure, or a pattern emerges. The sudden emergence of a form or figure is very exciting to me and unpredictable. When this happens, all I can do is follow its lead to the development of the composition and hopefully to a completed painting.”
Margo Proksa, a friend of Sara’s and a fellow artist, told us, “I think Sara’s world is charmed. As an artist, she explores life’s mysteries and finds joy. The nucleus of her art in any form … paintings or sculptures made of textiles, clay, or bread … has an incredibly strong, calm presence. Resourcefulness, finding connections, and awareness are her way of life.”
Sara told me recently that she now has four separate areas in her house … one each for hand stitching, cooking, painting, and resting. But I know that her wonderful relationship with play and mystery exists equally in each one of them, continuing to communicate without words her joy of life.