Our Virtual Visit series takes a behind-the-scenes look at what our community members are up to through studio tours and conversations about their creative practices. Join us twice a month on Wednesdays 7pm EST on IG Live.

Members can RSVP on the forum to set a reminder.

Sarah Stolar is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is rooted in a 25-year investigation of the female psychological narrative. Common threads in her work include loss of innocence, sexuality, death, spirituality, and identity. Fundamentally grounded in large-scale figurative drawing and painting, her thematic works also incorporate text and technology in installations, film, video, and performance art. Her current project, The Grief Club, is a multidisciplinary body of work presented as a fictitious nightclub. Using dark humor and irony to explore the emotions of grief, it is informed by the Kübler Ross model of the Five Stages of Grief that are personified as entertainers. They embody the Celtic tradition of keening women — paid mourners who wail lamentations, feast, dance, and perform provocative acts in a party-style funeral called ‘the merry wake.’ Begun in 2020 while caring for her artist mother, Merlene Schain, while she suffered from advanced stage Alzheimer’s disease, the nature of this autobiographical project has expanded to speak to our collective trauma and isolation as a result of COVID-19 and our current sociopolitical climate.