I want to be a superhero.
I want everyone to be a superhero.
My name is Sara Brown and I am a multi-media artist. I studied photography graduating in 2003 and that has been a main through line as a working artist in the narratives that I have been compelled to tell over the past twenty years. I am a natural born writer and dancer. I love the free-for-all-weird of performance art. Over the years I have incorporated all these artistic disciplines into my work as I am fascinated with where stories interconnect. All of these disciplines I have incorporated to convey that complexity of interconnection and how it propels humans forward.
Bringing strangers together through my work and seeing the spontaneous connections emerge, this is a prime motivator.
I want my work to be a motivational force, I want it to propel or to take root, galvanize people into their own action of truth.
I want my work to motivate people towards love of others and self acceptance. I want to use my powers for good.
I want everyone to be a superhero.
My current work and passion is The Nature Of Refuge.
Here are the beginnings of my project, where I built and created my own sanctuary in which I lived in a military tent in a ravine in the woods on Orcas Island, WA for 5 months.
I immersed myself in the concepts of refuge and sanctuary through living in nature, I lived in my art completely each day. I wrote about and photographed what I was seeing and experiencing in the natural world and how it paralleled what was sparking for me on a social and political level in the rest of the US. I began this in the spring of 2017 and in the fall of the same year, I had dismantled and left my island sanctuary in exchange of pursuing the next phase of the project where I traveled across the US for two years in my truck-house interviewing American feminine identifying and non-binary individuals about their experiences with vulnerability and sanctuary. This work is detailed in About The Nature Of Refuge.
I continued the project’s work as I returned to the west coast by diving deep into the writing and audio recording process of the current work-in-progress format for the book, The Nature Of Refuge.
The Nature Of Refuge has entered the arena of storytelling as performance through evoking the art of stories around the campfire to press back the dark. Through oral storytelling to intimate audiences, I have sparked the ancient ritual of knowledge as story, to enthrall and leave my audience with ideas and emotions to linger over.
I feel like a story gardener here, planting seeds like wildflowers.
Below are detailed examples of my favorite projects from over the years:
Everything Is Sexy! in New Orleans, summer 2015, for New Noise/Sound Off Festival in collaboration with performance artist extraordinaire, Jenny Sargent.
Silly movement in silly chairs and silly crutches exploring career-altering injuries in two silly individuals, Jenny and Sara. And dammit – it was sexy.
Click to view some silly sexy movement!
Photography Dancer! in NYC and New Orleans from 2012 – 2015, where my dance and my action of photography coexisted simultaneously. Photography Dancer! was composed of both solitary and communal action, the individualistic photographic medium coming together with the primal group participation of dance. Where strangers met on a spontaneous dance floor and fell in love for a minute. I created in-house performance and street performance celebrating and exploring what happens when people come together and communicate through the authentic language of dance. All the while, through manipulating the photographic medium, capturing it from inside the experience simultaneously.
Click to see Photography Dancer! in action – it’s fun!
More Photography Dancer! In action!
Photography Dancer! Is a Dancin’ Fool link
Sara and Sarah at The Nest in Williamsburg, Brooklyn circa 2015, was a beautiful one off. With one of my all-time favorite people to dance with, champagne singer and dancer, Sarah King. It was a hot NY summer night, two Sara/hs moving with the weird gods in a backyard performance night. Heckled by drunk neighbors throughout our performance, it was New York in every way.
I joined directorial and performance forces with photographer Florence Montmare and we created the creative duo, 2Spass. In April of 2012, 2Spass presented, Dream Machine, with the cast that included Tanya Gagne, Ambrose Martos, Aidan O’Shea, and Anush Merbegian in Brooklyn, NY at Big Sky Works in Williamsburg. Our project was a performative bridge that spanned circus art, performance art, and photography. It was a dream, it was a beautiful moment between.
I have created the video and photo blog, I Heart Street Art with SisterSaraBrown. As Sister SaraBrown from 2009 – 2011, I documented my love of street art through short online “woman on the streets” episodes where I traveled around the streets of NYC primarily but also around the country. Sister SaraBrown explored through stills and video the surprise and love of street art and its transformative power on the urban landscape.
I have been published photographically in the following print publications: New York Times, New York Post, Time Out NY Magazine, Where Women Cook, Gambit New Orleans, Southern Bride Magazine, along with a multitude of national and international online publications.
I have shown work, danced and performed in/with the following venues, galleries and collectives:
Orcas Island, WA The Nature of Refuge /The Barnacle
Bellingham, WA: The Nature of Refuge/ Asher and Olive Events, The Mom Show/Firehouse Arts and Events Center
New Orleans, LA: Krew Du Vieux, Batebunda, Sound Off! Festival/New Noise, Howlpop/ Ex Voto, Splish/Port
NYC: Cloud City/Rise Of The Shero, The Gershwin Hotel, Kenny Scharff’s Cosmic Cavern, ABC No Rio, St. Mark’s Church, Judson Memorial, Antagonist’s Art Movement, Gelato! Art Salon, Michael Alan’s Living Installation, Hungry March Band, Figment Art Festival,, Union Pool, Big Sky Works, The Bell House, Galapagos, Bang On!, Ribulaud, The Delancey, The Living Theater, (le) Poisson Rouge, Gowanus Ballroom, Brooklyn Lyceum, Public Assembly, Bushwick Open Studios, DUMBO Arts Festival
LA, CA: The Hive Gallery, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (LACDA), Los Angeles County Fair, Crabtastic Studios.