Sawyer Rose FRSA MRSS

Title: With My Name in Your Hand

With My Name in Your Hand memorializes the lives of free Black women living in 1830s America through large-scale sculpture and historical fiction as poetry. Sawyer Rose and Angela Williams Bickham have worked collaboratively on this project.

Location: Fairfax, California, USA

Creative Experience

As a multi-disciplinary artist and researcher, my job is to take complicated data – and in this case, historical socio-economic data – and present it to viewers in a way that helps people understand and interpret the issues that the datasets bring up. In the With My Name in Your Hand project, my role is to transform Angela Williams Bickham’s research on Free Women of Color in the pre-Civil War U.S. South into artworks that resurface and commemorate the lives of the women in this important, under-researched demographic. Using historically-relevant fibers and patterns further contextualizes the artworks, grabbing viewers’ attention and giving them a layered sensory experience that pulls the data off the page and into their imaginations. By engaging people creatively and artistically – by telling them a robust visual story – the tapestry artworks in With My Name in Your Hand transform passive viewers into passionate and curious historical learners. 

 Biography and links

Sawyer Rose, FRSA, MRSS is a sculptor, installation and social practice artist. Throughout her career, Rose has used her artwork to shine a spotlight on contemporary social and ecological issues. Her work on The Carrying Stones Project addresses women’s work inequity and has been featured by the New York Times, Ms., and BUST. Rose is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts (London), a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors (London), and the Sculptors Guild (New York). She is the Past President and current VP of the Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art (San Francisco). She currently lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

https://www.carrying-stones.com

https://www.instagram.com/ksawyerrose

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Exhibition / Gallery