Westtown School Artist in Residence

LOOKING UP
Sarah Bourne Rafferty
McLear Artist in Residence
2024-25

For most of my art career I have spent hours looking down at the ground or looking out onto landscapes around me. My artistic practice has been about seeing the smallest details among the everydayness of our lives – of trying to highlight parts of nature that have the ability to change what we see and how we think. Whether through the lens of my camera or by using natural specimens to recreate my vision, I am routinely trying to discover and rediscover the intricate wonders of nature. 

Here at Westtown, I found myself in the midst of making during the fall and winter months. I am typically  tending to administrative tasks at this time of the year or taking a break because the sun is not shining and UV light is a necessary ingredient for how I create my cyanotypes. Because I work with botanicals, it is also a natural time to take stock of where I am and what’s next, because natural flora is too, taking a break.

When I first began my residency, I found myself looking down and not seeing much of anything. Mostly I was staring at lots and lots of leaves that are a staple on the Westtown campus, but I wasn’t particularly excited by their shapes or forms. A trip in December to the Arboretum led me to a new vision and a completely different perspective. The giant evergreens forced me to look up. I recalled my friend Traci’s query to many of us over the years, “Did you look up today?” and that question, on that day last December, hit differently. Did I change my perspective today? Did I learn something new today? Quite literally, did I look up from my devices and engage in the world around me today? And so began my months of conversation with nature in a completely new way. I spent hours in the Arboretum LOOKING UP, noticing patterns and shapes, seeing the light filter through the trees and trying to build a body of work that might help you see and feel this new way of being – made possible by a mere shift in attention.

Because the sun was not at its summer peak, my process and construction of the works you see on display also shifted.  I began to experiment with exposure times and materials. I let go of the rules that more commonly govern the cyanotype process. I let go of what I thought I was going to make and began to let the making become more intuitive. I kept looking up, kept making, then looked up some more. This is what a residency is all about. I feel so fortunate to have been in the creative space in this time that has allowed my work to reach a level of creativity and an existence “outside the box” that it hadn’t before.

The power of this experience as Westtown’s Artist in Residence has not been unlike the power of my Westtown education and start to my teaching career. This connection to Place and to Community is at the core of who I am. This connection has been in my blood from the day I first stepped on campus at 13 years old. 

While on campus this March, these themes played a large role in my work with students as T. Shannon Moriarty and I asked students enrolled in Westtown’s Photography and Digital Arts class to consider and stretch their sense of place and community by looking for and collecting specimens and making photographs at four locations around campus – the Lake, the Tennis Courts, behind the Science Building, and the Arboretum. The work that these talented students created is stitched together in the large piece in the upstairs gallery and two of the smaller pieces here in the downstairs gallery.

Did you Look Up today?