Sarah Ann Rogan
+ Enlarge
Forgotten and Found
2022
35 mm film gelatin silver prints and cyanotype on canvas
+ Enlarge
Forgotten and Found
+ Enlarge
Forgotten and Found
Statement
As an artist and art teacher, I’ve been running around barefoot in the garden of my childhood home. I work to fish fondness out of deep skies. I sit delicately across the table from myself.
I orient myself in the mindset of what I recall I thought, felt, and was drawn to in my earlier stages of artistry. How I collected leaves and flowers as a first grader, the calling I had as a second grader to take blurry, close-up film pictures of my hamster. Revisiting these metaphoric ‘sites’ I inform not only my practice as an artist but how I am able to facilitate making as an art educator. Art class is one of the only places in school where emotions are welcomed and given a plate of saltines and grape jam.
Sitting with childhood memories is being swept out to sea. The work I’m engaging in is navigating. The more time I spend in the eye of the storm, the more readily my compass delivers me there. This prepares me to teach by picking up my younger self and hugging her, tucking her into bed, and reading her stories as she drifts asleep.
I knew this work would feel like water running through my fingertips, soft and hard to catch. In sitting with memories, examining them, and looking closely, I encountered details I had no answers to. What followed was a revisiting with loved ones, a clarifying of details, and a lightheartedness in shared history. I found glimpses of happiness long forgotten and pieces of myself that existed only in recollections. I understand I am capable of reliving moments. That I can dig them up and visit them often.
Teaching (MAT) Students