January 13 - February 11, 2023
Portraits of Home | Whitney Lea Sage
Artist Statement:
Homesickness Series, Portraits of Home and Domestic Fragments, three ongoing bodies of work on display in Whitney Lea Sage’s Portraits of Home, focus their lens on the sprawling neighborhoods of Detroit and Highland Park, Michigan, many rendered endangered and unrecognizable due to generations of disinvestment and abandonment. Homesickness Series and Portraits of Home present these neighborhoods directly through the language of meticulously rendered monochromatic ink drawings on watercolor paper and aquabord panels. Both series, stylistically modeled after tintype photography, frame endangered or absent homes in these cities as they appear today, as white voided façades or as empty lots. The varied presentation modalities of the homes are symbolic of the evolving disappearance of homes in Detroit and Highland Park, both cities having the largest home vacancy and demolition rates in the state of Michigan. Through means of display, the sculptural objects of Domestic Fragments are meant to function in conversation with Homesickness Series and Portraits of Home and serve as artifacts representing the loss of the home, the loss of people and the related loss of memory. Combining disparate fragments of domesticity, parts of toys, dishes, photos, tools, bricks, linens, etc., these objects are familiar yet appear foreign, morphing into abstracted plaster geological forms; the objects are visually present, yet seem physically absent and inaccessible. While these displayed objects relate the collection of mementos as attempts to hold on to memories and connections with place, the idea of the artifact also relates to common depictions of post-industrial cities as abandoned “blank slates” open for reinvention while failing to recognize or take into consideration the histories and communities that remain.
The use of familiar middle class archetypal home and homewares across all three series serve as empathetic entry points for viewers to connect to the experience of individual people and families who occupied each site. Through the incomplete picture provided by voided negative shapes, empty lots and incomplete artifacts on display, viewers are invited to consider the collective loss of identity, memory and belonging being experienced in shrinking communities. The physical removal of homes throughout Detroit and the harsh erasure of the home within my work represents the very real endangerment of accessible landmarks of communal memory and history and, in this way, these works aim to document what exists, what’s disappearing and what’s already unknown and build connections through our shared protective impulse for the
people and places we love.
Artist Bio:
Whitney Lea Sage is a multidisciplinary artist and educator originally from metro-Detroit currently serving as Assistant Professor of Art at North Central College in Naperville, IL. As a native of suburban Detroit, the rich history of midwestern, industrial cities and their bellwether relevance to the American experience has been a continual source of inspiration for Whitney’s work. Across her career and a variety of media and disciplines, her work has centered on “Rust Belt” cities as subject with the goal of opening a dialogue about challenging and uncomfortable histories and critically examining the lenses through which communities view and present one another. Raised in the suburbs herself, Whitney aims to highlight the long-standing contentious relationship between cities and suburbs due to racial, economic and cultural disparities and disenfranchisement and aims to expose the experiential distance between viewer and viewed-confronting the ambivalence often reflected in attitudes towards and media coverage of urban communities. Whitney’s work is driven to expand by the urgency of our current moment and a wellspring of source material as our post-industrial economy and our affinity for geographic sprawl and planned obsolescence continues leave behind communities, both urban and rural
alike, in its wake.
Whitney earned a MFA in Studio Art from the Sam Fox School of Visual Art at Washington University in St. Louis and Bachelors degrees in Art Education and Painting from Miami University. A selection of Sage’s recent work has been recently featured in solo exhibitions at Indiana University East, Workhouse Arts Center, Art Reach Mid-Michigan, ROY G BIV and
Ripon College. Whitney’s work has previously been featured in notable group exhibitions at the Painting Center, Superfront LA Gallery, the Lexington Art League, UICA, the Muskegon Museum of Art, the Kennedy Art Museum and the Dennos Museum Center. Whitney has been an artist-in-residence at AIR Paducah, the Vermont Studio Center, Wave Pool and Popp’s
Packing. Whitney’s creative work has been featured in a number of publications including Manifest Gallery’s INDA 14, Refract Journal, Hour Detroit Magazine, WomanArts Quarterly Journal, Newfound Journal, Maake Magazine, and the Post-Industrial Complex catalog, published by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit as a survey of makers in the Detroit
area.
For more information about Whitney and her work, visit www.whitneysage.com or follow her
on instagram @wlsagestudio.
Homesickness Series, Portraits of Home and Domestic Fragments, three ongoing bodies of work on display in Whitney Lea Sage’s Portraits of Home, focus their lens on the sprawling neighborhoods of Detroit and Highland Park, Michigan, many rendered endangered and unrecognizable due to generations of disinvestment and abandonment. Homesickness Series and Portraits of Home present these neighborhoods directly through the language of meticulously rendered monochromatic ink drawings on watercolor paper and aquabord panels. Both series, stylistically modeled after tintype photography, frame endangered or absent homes in these cities as they appear today, as white voided façades or as empty lots. The varied presentation modalities of the homes are symbolic of the evolving disappearance of homes in Detroit and Highland Park, both cities having the largest home vacancy and demolition rates in the state of Michigan. Through means of display, the sculptural objects of Domestic Fragments are meant to function in conversation with Homesickness Series and Portraits of Home and serve as artifacts representing the loss of the home, the loss of people and the related loss of memory. Combining disparate fragments of domesticity, parts of toys, dishes, photos, tools, bricks, linens, etc., these objects are familiar yet appear foreign, morphing into abstracted plaster geological forms; the objects are visually present, yet seem physically absent and inaccessible. While these displayed objects relate the collection of mementos as attempts to hold on to memories and connections with place, the idea of the artifact also relates to common depictions of post-industrial cities as abandoned “blank slates” open for reinvention while failing to recognize or take into consideration the histories and communities that remain.
The use of familiar middle class archetypal home and homewares across all three series serve as empathetic entry points for viewers to connect to the experience of individual people and families who occupied each site. Through the incomplete picture provided by voided negative shapes, empty lots and incomplete artifacts on display, viewers are invited to consider the collective loss of identity, memory and belonging being experienced in shrinking communities. The physical removal of homes throughout Detroit and the harsh erasure of the home within my work represents the very real endangerment of accessible landmarks of communal memory and history and, in this way, these works aim to document what exists, what’s disappearing and what’s already unknown and build connections through our shared protective impulse for the
people and places we love.
Artist Bio:
Whitney Lea Sage is a multidisciplinary artist and educator originally from metro-Detroit currently serving as Assistant Professor of Art at North Central College in Naperville, IL. As a native of suburban Detroit, the rich history of midwestern, industrial cities and their bellwether relevance to the American experience has been a continual source of inspiration for Whitney’s work. Across her career and a variety of media and disciplines, her work has centered on “Rust Belt” cities as subject with the goal of opening a dialogue about challenging and uncomfortable histories and critically examining the lenses through which communities view and present one another. Raised in the suburbs herself, Whitney aims to highlight the long-standing contentious relationship between cities and suburbs due to racial, economic and cultural disparities and disenfranchisement and aims to expose the experiential distance between viewer and viewed-confronting the ambivalence often reflected in attitudes towards and media coverage of urban communities. Whitney’s work is driven to expand by the urgency of our current moment and a wellspring of source material as our post-industrial economy and our affinity for geographic sprawl and planned obsolescence continues leave behind communities, both urban and rural
alike, in its wake.
Whitney earned a MFA in Studio Art from the Sam Fox School of Visual Art at Washington University in St. Louis and Bachelors degrees in Art Education and Painting from Miami University. A selection of Sage’s recent work has been recently featured in solo exhibitions at Indiana University East, Workhouse Arts Center, Art Reach Mid-Michigan, ROY G BIV and
Ripon College. Whitney’s work has previously been featured in notable group exhibitions at the Painting Center, Superfront LA Gallery, the Lexington Art League, UICA, the Muskegon Museum of Art, the Kennedy Art Museum and the Dennos Museum Center. Whitney has been an artist-in-residence at AIR Paducah, the Vermont Studio Center, Wave Pool and Popp’s
Packing. Whitney’s creative work has been featured in a number of publications including Manifest Gallery’s INDA 14, Refract Journal, Hour Detroit Magazine, WomanArts Quarterly Journal, Newfound Journal, Maake Magazine, and the Post-Industrial Complex catalog, published by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit as a survey of makers in the Detroit
area.
For more information about Whitney and her work, visit www.whitneysage.com or follow her
on instagram @wlsagestudio.
