Assistant Professor of Art
- Office: Clayton Center for the Arts
- Department: Fine Arts
- Phone: 865-981-8178
- Email: sarah.bernstein@maryvillecollege.edu
- Education: B.F.A., Washington University in St. Louis, M.F.A., University of Tennessee
Sarah Bernstein is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in East Tennessee. Her creative practice blends studio art, collaborative performance, storytelling, and community engagement. She holds an MFA in Time Based Art from the University of Tennessee Knoxville and a BFA in Printmaking from Washington University in St. Louis.
She has served as an Artist-in-Residence at ComPeung Residency (Thailand), Cité internationale des Arts (France), FIX in Art (Greece), The St. Louis Artists Guild (USA), and WeBook Art Space (Malaysia). Her work and performances have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Primary Gallery (UK), Oregon Contemporary (Portland, OR), and as part of the Himalayan Butoh Festival (India).
Artist Statement:
My artistic practice combines research-driven inquiry with intuitive ritual to develop distinct bodies of work that revolve around a core thesis. Dreams, ecology, poetry, theater, spirituality, and folk culture serve as orientation points within both my performance and studio work.
My most recent project, “Terrible Miracles,” explores historical locust swarms in the United States through an array of mediums, including textiles, sculpture, and sound. “Terrible Miracles” embraces scientific data, compelling conversations, and primary source documents as inspiration for a multi-layered exploration of glitch-pastoralism, invented folklore, and dreamlike artifacts.
As an artist I am constantly drawn towards narratives that permit polarity, contradiction, tension and humor exist in tentative harmony. I am interested in conceptual spaces where fact and folklore converge, where reality is inseparable from poetry or dream.