Artist Reception Friday, February 6, 5-8pm
Showing through February

This series honors all of the courageous women who left their homelands—often under great duress—to immigrate to America or migrate within it in search of a new life. Many spoke no English and faced immense challenges while holding fast to hope for a better future.

Each three-dimensional mixed-media panel tells the story of an im/migrant woman. Drawing from historical research and intuitive response, I take artistic liberties to create visual narratives akin to creative nonfiction. Some accompanying stories are true; others are imagined. Viewers are invited to weave their own.

The work focuses primarily on women who immigrated in the early 1900s. Using public-domain, family and found photographs, I digitally combine portraits with my own images of landscapes, birds, and architecture, then mount the collages onto dimensional wooden panels and integrate paint to complete each story.

Sara Friedlander began exploring photography at nineteen, later working extensively in ceramics before shifting fully into painting and mixed media. Her practice is rooted in the belief that all forms of artistic expression are acts of communication, revealing personal aesthetic and core values.

Since the late 1990s, her work has spanned digital photography, collage, sculpture, and installation. Major series include Chinese Women: Bound and Determined, Subway Reflexions, Architecture Restructured, Stonewalled in Jerusalem, and American Women: Birds of im/Migration. Her most recent works, Offerings: Human/Nature and Submerged, both address the urgent relationship between humanity and the natural world.

Variable editions (up to 5) of each piece in this series will be available for purchase throughout the exhibition. Sara Friedlander is also offering custom ancestor pieces, created with your family photographs and personal histories crafted as a one-of-a-kind mixed-media piece honoring an individual or lineage. Inquire through Tumbleweed Found.

Sara’s work is being presented here courtesy of MK Contemporary Art