Sarah Gelleny

If I am a forest (2022)
Ceramic, Found Leaves, Etching 48” x 60”

This installation features leaves found and kept from around the forests I live in, these include leaves from where I grew up in North Carolina, friends or relatives houses, and public parks I frequent in New York City. Over the course of the installation the leaves continue to decay and fall as the images etched on them grow more obscure. The leaves are laser etched with imagery from the forests in which they were found. The written poetry examines the cyclical nature of forests in relation to autonomy and inner reflection through personification of the self. If I am a forest was first created in November of 2022 and is currently in its sixth month of decay.

Sarah Gelleny (she/her)

Sarah Gelleny is currently an undergraduate student studying at New York University receiving a BFA in Studio Art with a minor in Creative Writing. She originates from Asheville, North Carolina and grew up on the National Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Forest. Her work intimately draws from the influences of nature, craft, and folk art she grew up with. As an interdisciplinary artist she regularly collaborates with organic material and fibers as a medium. She currently lives in Manhattan and has exhibited in group exhibitions in the Rosenberg Gallery (2022), The Commons (2022), as well as participated in Greenwich House Pottery’s Street Fundraiser (2022) and Schwartz Plaza’s Annual Earth Festival (2022).

Artist Statement

As an artist, I seek to emphasize the precarity of sustaining life through forms of installation and sculpture. I am interested in the cyclical nature of life and time. Themes I explore include nurture, grief, comfort, death, and growth. Through these concepts I examine not just my personal relationship to these concepts but the way these ideas impact all aspects of life and form. Time is a universal that will be experienced by every piece of matter on this earth, and all that is living will die. When we die we return to the earth, this cycle is at the center of my work. My practice involves deep self and societal reflection. Through my process I hope to welcome others into a space where they are able to look inside of themselves, question their own impacts on life, and feel engaged with the natural world as a reference to recognizing themselves as natural beings.