Sage Dawson
Semifinalist
Sage Dawson (b. Lansing, MI) has a BFA from Missouri State University, Springfield, and an MFA from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. She has exhibited and lectured at various sites including New York Art Residency and Studios Foundation, Brooklyn, NY; Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids, MI; City University of New York, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Project Space/Printed Matter and Print Center New York, all New York, NY; Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Counterpublic Triennial and the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, both St. Louis, MO; Laumeier Sculpture Park, Sunset Hills, MO. Her work has appeared in Art in America, Art in Print, Elephant Magazine, Dwell Magazine, From Here to There (Princeton Architectural Press), Hyperallergic, and New Art Examiner. Dawson teaches printmaking and oversees the Foundations Program at Washington University, St. Louis, MO and is the Founder and Co-director at STNDRD, Granite City, IL and NON STNDRD, Sauget, IL.
Statement from the Artist:
Dawson’s work explores issues present in the St. Louis region, including the erasure of vernacular architecture, visible and invisible borders and acts of care as a form of protest. Her work, often embedded into the built environment, is site-sensitive, architecturally-responsive and signals the ever-changing politics of space. She uses analog and digital approaches to creation, often flipping between the two to push imagery through screens in order to play with light as well as warp, pixelate and study the limitations of materials. Analog techniques in her work typify domestic labor: banner-making, needlepoint, open-work, patterning, cross-stitch and sewing. Dawson’s recent work, Eternal Loop, centers on a little-known community of 19th century, self-taught weavers in the Ozarks.