TIME-FIRE BOOK II

This is my second 'book' called Time-Fire. I love the elemental book form I love to use language in my work. Like a book, this piece 'reads' left to right and it another piece based on one of my favorite quotes from Jorge Luis Borges:

"Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.”

LETTER TO WINTER

This piece is a larger exploration of seasonal transitions--when warmth of Spring starts to peek through the cool of Winter and the light starts to change. And winter always feels to me like a mix of crisp brightness and life's deep slumber. I love how the fan shape expresses both movement and stillness, openness and closed-ness--in this piece, I hope it expresses a kind of joyful *pow*. Letter to Winter just won "Best in Show" at the 2021 Taos Fall Arts Festival.

SPIRIT SHIELD

This piece is about the resiliency of the human spirit. Watch this video to learn more. https://sarahbushartworks.com/videos/

WATER MOBILE

The circle is figuring more and more predominantly in my work. In this mobile, I've created a landscape type images using a series of moving concentric circles to reference the globe, a bullseye, wholeness, and change. I hope the viewer experiences an engaging tension between the beauty of a highly decorated surface and the message of the image.

WATER TABLE

This piece is about what's below as well as what is above. The mirror underneath the peeled back or cracked earth image is meant to both represent water and to give the viewer a glimpse of themselves inside the piece. Water is life. Here in arid New Mexico, we are ever-aware of the preciousness of the water table.

OUROBOROS

The serpent eating its tail is an ancient image of the cycle of life and eternal renewal. It was especially popular in the medieval period, one of my favorite eras in western arat. This is my own version--my first, but perhaps not my last.

SPRING DIPTYCH

Sometimes when Spring is slow to take hold, you have to conjure it up yourself.

BACKYARD BODHISATTVA II

This is a joyful piece for me. A Bodhisattva is an enlightened being that sticks around to assist the rest of us along on our journeys. I like to think they're everywhere in our lives. The interference oil colors that I used no the background makes the imagery behind the bodhisattva seems to emerge and recede at different times of day creating a kind of etheral quality that I like.

Warmer Climes

This piece is about what lingers for me after visiting a tropical place--the intensity of the light, colors, flora and fauna.

WHAT HOPE LOOKS LIKE

This is my idea of what hope might look like. A lake at sunrise. A promising distant view. It's a new day.

BUT I AM THE FIRE

This dragonfly is my version of the phoenix--both rising up and and being lifted into the perfection of the glowing circle because nobody does it alone. Hope. Love. Transformation.

BOLETOS MIRROR

Boletos' means 'tickets' in Spanish. When I made this piece, I was thinking about the personal implications of taking the risk to cross the border--the fear, the lack of control people must feel, and the real life difficulties that drive people to take that risk. The surrounding vintage mirror frame is as much a part of the piece as the image inside it. There but for the grace of God go I.

ALL BUT THE MARINERS

This piece is about weathering the storm. The title refers to a line from The Tempest: "All but the Mariners Have Quit the Vessel." More and more, I find myself working within the circle and this antique circular mirror frame has many references for me: a porthole, a pocketwatch, a globe.

THE GREEN BEYOND

I lived in an urban environment for over 20 years and had created a green oasis inside the walls of my tiny courtyard. I am intrigued by the intersection between nature and the city and I tried to overlap it here in this piece the way it's overlapped in my life.

ANCIENT OCEAN

This piece was inspired by hikes I used to take in the Monzano and Sandia mountains outside of Albuquerque, NM. The long vistas of the high desert landscape look like the bottom of the ocean-- and of course they once were. The fan shape creates a feeling of both movement and stillness that I am using more and more in my work.

Forest Bath Fan

I wanted to capture that feeling of lush green with a scintillating light.

CHURCH OF WINTER

This piece is about light and color in winter--I love dusk and dawn and the light on its way out of or into each day. Twenty-three carat gold leaf gave me a stained glass window feeling that I thought captured that feeling of sacredness we all experience when immersed in nature's beauty.

Time is a River

This piece was commissioned by the Organ Donor Network of NY for their reception/lobby  area. It's a 4" x 8" grid and is inspired by a quote by Jorge Luis Borges and portions of the lines are woven in and out of the garden image. Butterflies are also an important symbol in the Organ Donor Community. The quote is as follows: Time is the substance from which I am made. "Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire." I have made several pieces based on this quote, I think it's the perfect expression of the cycle of life.

PASSAGE

This piece is my visual depiction of sitting in meditation–seeking the present moment in a brain immersed in memories, beliefs, and lots and lots of plans. Breathe in, breathe out.

TEPOZTLAN

This piece is about how we live each day within what we perceive of as a concrete reality and yet, all the while, the enormity of a universe we barely understand infinitely wraps around us--expressed here as a kind of peeled back corner (top right) that reveals a swirling vastness lying just behind (and maybe within and around) an otherwise serene interior.