Artist Feature | Sarah Bernhardt

Who are the artists that have had the most influence on your development as an artist?

My high school art teacher, Dave Pawl, was very instrumental in my initial skill development and shaping how I think about the role of art in the world, giving me the courage to both be experimental as well as look to art history. In college one particular professor, Jeff Shawhan, was a really great role model of honoring both craft and "high art". He would bring in conceptual guest artists while also helping me participate in snow sculpting contests or creating functional ceramics for an empty bowls fundraiser. He didn't disparage any kind of artist making things and this was a really invitational kind of way to be and move in the art world that had a fundamental impact on how I create and invite people to participate in the art world.

As for celebrity artists, I've been very inspired by Oscar Munoz, Alfredo Jaar, Andy Goldsworthy, Doris Scalcedo, and Suzanne Lacey.

Tell us a bit about what your creative process looks like.

My creative process usually starts as slow, somewhat undefined, even subconscious photographic exploration. After months or even years, I notice that I've been consistently looking at certain forms or subject matter with my camera lens (often my phone initially). Once I see a particular pattern appearing I start to think about what it means or why I'm returning to it. In these early stages of developing work I often feel fairly lost and even depressed about my artmaking, even though this part of the process is often most honestly rooted in a place of pure interest, wonder, and instinct. Once the conceptual tenets of the work become more clear I will start to curate and create more work intentionally developing that given theme or idea. I will then start to share the work a bit or reach out for exhibition opportunities and often the last stages of bringing work together for a show really helps me crystalize the final intentions of the work.

Installation is often a significant component of my work. I'm interested in asking people to look at and engage with images in a particular way, so putting a show together offers significant development right at the end of my process, usually causing me to frantically create some more work right at the end because I finally realize what it has all been about and how I want to make it.

What inspires you to create?

Like many artists for centuries before and surely after me, I love all things beautiful. I'm really compelled to look at, and hopefully create work that will not just visually resonate, but is also conceptually compelling, a marriage of aesthetics and ideas. I'm inspired to create often for the sheer enjoyment of making things and wondering at the beauty of them. I am also inspired to find those points of connection with other people when they look at the work and see a kind of visual poetry that expresses life explored in a way that makes their own experience seen, or validated, or even new and revelatory. I'm inspired to try and find a kind of visual poetry that is able to "say" things in a way that no other medium can express it in exactly those terms, finding a really visceral sort of resonance with the lived human experience. This notion seems really elusive and abstract but is a constant inspiration to reach for.

You create in a variety of mediums. Do you have a favorite?

I don't have a particularly favorite medium, I enjoy different parts and points of the process for various mediums. I really like the early stages of a painting for example, but usually find the finishing and detail work tedious. I don't love making photographs from a technological standpoint of working with a camera or computer, but I really enjoy the process of walking or wandering that often accompanies my photographic ventures. I also love working with the final printed object and constructing new kinds of installations and experiences for viewing photographs. I do overall really enjoy making video work, both the shooting and editing, and the collaborative process feels engaging and rewarding. I mostly enjoy finding the medium that best suits the kind of visual idea I want to express, whatever that may be for a particular project.

I also think of my artmaking practice quite expansively, including my work as an arts administrator and curator, through a sort of "social practice" lens. My work coming out of grad school was centered on the artist as facilitator for community engagement. This kind of practice certainly takes the majority of my creative time, and like any of the other mediums has its ups and downs. Though community work is often challenging, my favorite part of creating and running a non-profit arts center is the generative work of dreaming, planning, researching, and constructing ways for the community to engage with the arts and one another in positive and beautiful ways.

What advice would you give a young artist?

My advice would be to not lose faith in the opportunities and need for artists even when the pathway for being a professional artist is often so unclear, competitive, and thankless. Recognizing that you will likely have to piece many things together to make a living, or even create new opportunities for yourself where there were none before, I would just encourage young artists to keep making lots of work, listen to your mentors while also honoring your inner interests even when they may seem unpopular, and embrace all of the breadth of learning you may experience from having all sorts of different gigs in the art world, even if they are not what you initially pictured yourself doing as an artist.

What are you working on now?

I just mounted my first solo exhibition in St. Louis so I'm just in the process of finalizing and showing a photographic exploration that I've been working on for the past three years called "Manna". The work is an exploration of environmental and spiritual care through a lens of wonder.

I'm not sure what's next, and I'm both excited and daunted to start that creative process over again!

To learn more about Sarah and see more of her work visit sarahbernhardtart.com.