Sara Hess

Sara Hess is an artist and teacher in Athens, GA. She completed a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art and a MFA in Visual Art at The Ohio State University. Her interdisciplinary studio practice utilizes painting, printmaking, discarded objects, ceramics, glass, sculpture, and installation. Through her work and relationship to images, materials, and people, she endeavors to listen deeply. Sara has exhibited work at Urban Arts Space in Columbus OH, Stove Works in Chattanooga TN, Erie Art Museum, and Print Center New York. Previous residencies include In Cahoots in Petaluma CA, Chautauqua Visual Arts in Chautauqua NY, and Officina Stamperia del Notaio in Tusa, Sicily. She is co-founder of Two Parts Press, a printmaking studio and artist collaboration based in Athens, GA.
 

Research Focus

Listening is one way that I love, and the studio is a place I open toward love through my material practice. When I talk or write or reference love, I’m not alluding to a romantic connotation of the word. I’m invested in bell hooks’ definition of love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Through spiritual growth, one gets closer to self-actualization and this balance between mind, body, and soul. For me, loving is evidence of us arriving closer to that place. Loving begs the question of what parts of ourselves we feel called to spread. I endeavor to listen deeply to this call and tend to the psychic gut.