Meet Sarah

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Sarah Bartolotta was born and raised in Hudson, NY. She attended Arcadia University where she graduated in 2018 with a B.A in Art History. In 2017, she took a ceramics elective and a year later finally fell in love with the material. After graduating, she apprenticed for a year through the university’s studio under Gregg Moore and Polly Apfelbaum. She carried out research and experimentation of materials. She is currently an Artist in Residence at the Worcester Center for Craft in Worcester, Ma. 

 

Prior to working in ceramics, she focused in abstract splatter watercolor paintings. This style now influences her ceramic design. Sarah begins by splattering pigment onto a surface (ceramic or paper). She then returns to the surface and outlines each individual splatter mark. Not only does the circling alter how the splatter is processed visually, but it also allows the artist to feel some control amid the chaos. This give and take of control is something that she has struggled with in her own life. Learning how and when to let go and how to make peace with what is left. 

The broad physical movements necessary for the pigment to be forced off of the brush represents the unleashing of emotion, total freedom for a split second. Only to then be faced with the outcome and the reality that such freedom is not sustainable. Similar to Newtons Third Law of Action and Reaction, the pendulum must swing in the opposite direction and, as if an act of penance, such wild and free movements must be balanced out by the tight and strenuous act of outlining

 

More of Sarah's work can be seen on her Instagram @skb.art