About 

Sarah Jane Dahms is a book artist and painter from Kansas. Her work centers on the artmaking process to explore the relationship between artist, viewer, and artwork within a piece. By engaging in the language of process and materiality her books and paintings analyze the internal landscape of each practice and its effects on the maker and observer. Dahms earned a BA in English and Visual Arts from The University of Kansas with special attention paid to Painting, Fiber Art, and Book Art. She then received her MFA in Book Arts from The University of Alabama.

Full Bio

Sarah Jane Dahms grew up in a house surrounded by her great-grandmother's watercolor paintings. Living in the suburbs of Kansas City, the impressionist galleries of the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art were as familiar as burnt ends. She spent countless hours in colorfully stained clothes, tracking paint from one year to the next. Simultaneously, her love of reading grew through the suggestions of her three older siblings. As time wore on, she merged the disciplines and began exploring books as artistic objects.

As an undergraduate student SJ pursued dual degrees in English and Visual Art at The University of Kansas. Her work in painting and writing portrayed figures and objects to analyze their deeper meaning and purpose. Long-term illness affecting her reading comprehension caused her to dig further into the field of Book Arts. In physical bookbinding and layout design Sarah Jane explores the historical relationship between humanity and the written word. She is particularly drawn to the interaction between art, artist, and viewer as they affect one another throughout the artistic process. By focusing on process errors, materiality, and fingerprints she draws attention to areas of bookmaking that often fade into the background.

Dahms recently completed her MFA in Book Arts at the University of Alabama. Afterwards, she plans to tackle accessibility, aesthetic, and quality concerns in the bookmaking through teaching and creation.

Artist Statement

Sarah Jane Dahms explores the relationship between art, artist, and viewer through book arts and painting. Her historical inspiration transforms her pieces into relational works rooted and grounded in layers of conversation. As Dahms works she feels generations of creatives that came before her. Her brush is a conduit for her great-grandmother; her pen responds to eras of text design and printing conventions. Creation is the act of experiencing and exploring life as they once lived it. Through art, history lives.

Though she explores many artistic fields, her approach is consistent. Whether working in two or three dimensions, she begins in a state of research. Dahms is enraptured by the history of process. She studies past needs and current needs to uncover structural similarities and build a piece that is both beautiful and useful. To her, material is essential. Physicality demonstrates emotion as the material responds and adds its own personality to each piece. A book is as much about the paper choice as it is the words on the page; a painting is as much the paint as it is the subject matter. Each work is a push and pull between the physical limits of a medium and its transformation into something new. Recent work emphasizes process by highlighting errors throughout the bookmaking process and places where her hand has altered material with ink. Through these changes Dahms discusses the push and pull between imperfect artist and perfectionism.