Artist Talk
Wednesday, March 26, 1PM
PCA Gallery
“BLUE: Water as Metaphor” Sabra Booth and Sophie Sanders
March 24 - May 9, 2025, Palmetto Center for the Arts Gallery
Curated by Sabra Booth
Blue is a comprehensive body of Sabra Booth and Sophie Sanders’ work with the theme of water. Like a 19th century naturalist, Booth often sketches and paint flora and fauna on site. She uses these drawings as touchstones for her studio work. Design considerations are evident through the implementation of graphic line, negative space, actual texture, and limited color. Booth typically creates an interplay between the gestural fluidity of water media and the structural line work of drawing or printmaking processes. Since her graduate thesis show, she has explored the play of light and shadow, incorporating translucent cut-paper. Beauty and at times, humor have been tactics for conveying her thoughts. Underlying these concerns are reflections on personal identity. The materials she works with are often intrinsic to the content of the project. For instance, in her print, Frack House, she deeply embossed the print, rubbed with soil from the Eagle Ford Shale area. The richly textured strata of the ground’s vertical cross-section evoke the beauty of our planet’s subterranean realm. Since Northwest Vista College sits upon the artesian zone of the Edwards Aquifer, she will focus her work for the show on this relevant connection.
Water is change, water is movement, and water is healing. Bodies of water compel an instinctual amniotic awe that alters our brainwave to expand our consciousness, compassion, and creativity. The theme and aesthetics of water have been animating Sophie Sanders recent multidisciplinary artwork in cyanotype, painting, and printmaking as I respond to the precarious state of our survival on the planet due to climate change realities. Using cyanotype on cloth, she experiments with light and gesture to produce dynamic compositions with human and natural forms. Her recent work also explores the expressive potential of blue to signify emotion, nature, and cultural contexts. Booth and Sanders met while both living in New York City in the early 2000’s. They will collaborate on a cyanotype project for the exhibition, as well as displaying their own individual works.
Free and open to the public.