SARAH G. SHARP
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, VISUAL ARTS - FOUNDATION, UMBC

Shelter and Land Use, 2017
Denim, embroidery thread, vinyl fringe, wood

Industry and Craft, 2017
Denim, cotton batting, embroidery thread, wooden dowel, brass hooks.

These works by Sharp reference the legacy of the Whole Earth Catalog, described on the title’s fiftieth anniversary by Anna Wiener in The New Yorker (April 18, 2018) as “a compendium of product listings, how-to diagrams, and educational ephemera intended for communards and other participants in the back-to-the-land movement.” The series of catalogs offered a vision for a new social order in the late 1960s and 1970s – an ethos for a tumultuous time that feels palpably relevant today. Though its complicated legacy includes the fact that its ideology is also often cited as inspiration for Silicon Valley’s techno-libertarianism, from its incarnation through to today.

Women Looking/Camerawoman, 2021
Custom wallpaper
(at right in adjacent photo; scroll down for detail image)

“Women Looking/Camerawoman is a part of a series of custom wallpaper designs based on images found in early underground feminist publications (1970-73). Among the discourse I expected to encounter when researching this material (abortion rights, the passage of the Equal Rghts Amendment, etc.), I found many conversations about the revolutionary potential of the newly created component of cable television: public access television channels. Public access TV represents the first TV-based examples of what media theorists call “the many speaking to the many,” and, in some ways, it was a precursor to today’s social media. 

 “Women Looking/Camerawoman pays homage to the utopian potential of new technologies and the forces that shaped 20th century community media. A related Augmented Reality App connected to this series, where viewing the wallpaper through your phone or tablet reveals layers of video and sound, is forthcoming in June 2021.”