Sarah Crooks: A Circular Way of Being in the World
By Hope McMath Photos by Toni Smailagic
Sarah Crooks is one of our region’s most enduring and endearing creatives, combining her experiences as a maker, healer, educator, and environmentalist. She is a multidisciplinary, ecofeminist artist. “An ecofeminist is someone who supports all of life,” Crooks explains. “It’s really breaking down hierarchies and looking at a circular way of being in the world. That expresses itself through my work and in the materials I choose, the way that I live.”
Her latest creations combine with long-evolving artworks in an exhibition entitled “Long Way(t) Home” as part of the Moving the Margins initiative at the Corner Gallery in the Jesse Ball duPont Center. It is the latest achievement in a 30-year career that was recognized with the prestigious Community Foundation Ann McDonald Baker Art Ventures Award for 2023.
Through large, complexly layered tapestries, found-object sculptures, drawings, puppetry, and the reshaping of the interior space, viewers are invited to join Crooks on a metaphorical pilgrimage to the subconscious where the feminine principal of unconditional love is retrieved, where home is found. “I was asked to work with the themes of homelessness, displacement, and mental health. So, the ‘long way(t)’ implies looking at home as a process and a relationship, while also commenting on how difficult it is for people to find housing.”
Crooks has “come to view home not merely as a physical space, but as a dynamic relational practice grounded in reciprocity. It’s a space where our gifts are both offered and received, transcending the confines of a house or a specific location. Home, instead, becomes an emotion—a feeling we cultivate within ourselves and carry wherever we go.”
