My sculptures are vessels for caching personal stories and establishing connections with the past and the future. I cherish the intimate details and still moments punctuating my busy existence, but their clarity can be fleeting. A weeping Calla Lilly outside my studio door, a decomposing whale swept up from the sea, the slowly eroding granite needles from my home in the Black Hills--these things feel like metaphors for experiences and reminiscences dulled by the passage of time. By creating mementos and souvenirs to document my experiences, I seek to give form to my memories, distilling them to their essence and preserving them against decay.
Aggregate. Sarah Logan. 2022. Photo by Vanessa Cowdry
Current Work
Ex vivo-out of the Living is an ongoing series of artworks informed by my work as a citizen scientist. The ceramic sculptures are hand-formed and finished in a wood-fire kiln. They consider life in some of its smallest forms: the various phytoplankton and aggregated colonies of bryozoans found in our coastal waters. Using sumi ink and graphite on paper, the rain drawings are made by placing these materials outside in a redwood forest, to collaborate with the emergence of rain drops at a given moment. Using both direct observation and scientific tools of observation such as microscopes, phytoplankton nets and field guides, the work explores the intersection and margins between art and science.
Observatory Installation View. Sarah Logan. 2022. Photo by Vanessa Cowdry.
Otolith Project
Otolith Project
Otolith grew out of a collaboration with the Plankton Ecology Lab at Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Oregon. In August 2023, I sailed on the oceanographic research vessel R/V Sally Ride with a team of scientists studying the planktonic portion of the marine food web. I joined the team on this 2-week journey to better understand the complex relationship between art and science. This work examines the area where these two modes of thought overlap, raising the question of how permeable the boundary between them is.
Out at sea, samples of larval fishes and their zooplankton prey were imaged, collected, and preserved. These samples will be studied for many years, providing a wealth of information about the fishes, their diets, and the environmental conditions promoting their growth and survival. Of particular interest to me were the fishes’ otoliths, pairs of tiny ear stones which provide key sensory information to the fish. As the fish grows, these structures grow via the deposition of daily layers, each layer recording the individual fish’s growth and its watery environment like a daily journal.
The ceramic pieces in Otolith are significantly enlarged from their original microscopic size and cast in porcelain. Each pair is then fired in a reduction-cooled wood kiln, where they serve as data points, recording the unique atmospheric conditions at specific locations within the kiln. This process parallels the research at sea, where samples—like the otoliths of fish—are collected to study the environmental conditions affecting marine life. Just as ocean samples reveal environmental insights, the ceramic otoliths record kiln conditions and the relationship between materials and the environment during firing.
