MCAC selects Sarah Heath as its 21st Emerging Artist Award Recipient

When you look at the intricate details in Sarah’s direct carved casting metal work, you would think a machine created it. Her absolute love for creating work through a repititive process makes you wonder, “Is she?”  “I become a sculpture machine, a robot driven with a rhythm set by something internal and carried out by my hands,” explains Sarah. Her process and love of creating art objects in multiples as if she’s a well-oiled assembly line would further supports our artificial intelligence suspicions. But we know she is real, and inspired, and creates beautiful art with her own hands. All are necessary qualilties for Magic City Art Connection’s (MCAC/#MCACBham) Emerging Artist Award recipient, which the festival hands out annually to a talented Birmingham artist. This award was established to honor, support and present new artists of great artistic potential and integrity to the Festivals sponsors, patrons and public.

The subject matter of Sarah’s work has an inherent duality and is expressed using a variety of raw materials including metal, wood, paper, rubber, and even video. In past work, Sarah has referenced her time in Kansas amongst the wheat and cornfields, and of course, the looming threats of tornados, whose destructive force has been experienced annually here in the south. “My intension with these works was to create a sense of wonder and dread while still maintaining visual beauty and pleasurable design principals. In essence, a comforting sense of terror.”  Sarah balances that ying and yang nature in her work well. She describes it as an exercise in the theory of deconstruction. “I recognize established binary oppositions, and then build something new that respects the narrative of each opposing concept: Ideas such as heartfelt sarcasm, a comforting sense of terror, safety in abandonment, and extravagant simplicity.”

Sarah is in great company among the 20 MCAC Emerging artist recipients listed below who have preceeded her. In addition to being prominently featured at the 31st annual contemporary art festival on April 25-27 in Linn Park, Sarah will receive a $350 cash award, tickets to some of MCAC’s big events like Art Bash and Corks & Chefs, and will be recognized at MCAC’s Friday Night Applause Awards dinner. As part of this honor, the festival commissions 30 works of art to be placed with major sponsors and other important contributors and collectors.

Find Sarah at Booth 120 adjacent to Linn Park’s fountain and the Info Center Gazebo. Read more about Sarah and her art process, plus see more of her work on MCAC’s 2014 Emerging Artist page.

Most recent Emerging Artist Honorees:

2013   Christopher Davis – Painting
2012   Daisy Winfrey – Mixed Media
2011   Kristin Skees – Photograhpy
2010   Binx Newton – Mixed Media
2009   Spencer Shoults – Mixed Media
2008   Walt Creel – Mixed Media
2007   John Fields – Painting
2006   Clayton Colvin – Mixed Media
2005   Jane Timberlake – Mixed Media
2004   Merrilee Challiss – Mixed Media
2003   Amy Pleasant Henderson – Painting
2002   Annie Kammerer Butrus – Painting
2001   Joel Seah – Painting, Mixed Media
2000   Allen Peterson – Sculpture
1999   Dan Bynum – Mixed Media
1998   Beth Rogers – Photography
1997   AntJuan Oden – Mixed Media

Photo credits:

Cast Iron Vessels photo by Jonathan Purvis
Cast Iron Guitar photo by Leslie Burns
Wooden Tornado photo by Leslie Burns