"After Sarah Stevens moved out of her studio the space was listed on Craigslist, and during my search for a new live/work space I found it, loved it, and rented it. Upon first seeing the space I recognized the wall collage as Sarah’s (it was featured in Cantanker Issue 5: EXCESS). Troubled with the idea of tearing it down I decided to contact Sarah and ask if it had ever been shown to the public, other than in publication format, and learned it had not. So I offered to produce it as our first showcase at Co-Lab, setting the stage for our future projects and offering a farewell to an installation two years in the making." – Sean Gaulager
“In November of 2006, a few months after my return to my hometown of Austin after graduating from Rhodes College in Memphis, I began leasing the nondescript corrugated metal building on Allen Street to allow myself a private but sort of wanton and hedonistic freedom. I painted the walls of the half apartment half studio gratuitously and without hesitation, and began a floor to ceiling collage in an effort to make sense and use of miscellaneous detritus that had been building in my life. I worked obsessively, though without concern for banality-just absent-mindedly doodling on the walls. The result is an intricate, layered, candy-like mess made of pages ripped from fashion magazines, glossy pink paint and tacky, bombastic fabrics in implied organic forms.” – Sarah Stevens
Artist Statement: “The art that I make is conceived and produced from obsession and repetition. Ranging from quietly meditative to hyperactive and grossly indulgent, the resulting forms are emulations and adaptations of the organic shapes found in the natural world. High-key color, repetitive gestural mark-making, and found textiles are used in a contemplative but tongue-in-cheek manner to create abstract, corporal forms that are both whimsical and grotesque.” – Sarah Stevens www.sarahelizabethstevens.com
