Bunnell Street Arts Center
11:00 PM - 05:00 PM, every day through Sep 03, 2025.
Artists Sara Tabbert and Steven Godfrey exhibit at Bunnell Street Arts Center from August 1 – September 3rd, 2025. The exhibit opening is First Friday, August 1st, 5-7pm with artist talks at 6pm accompanied by live ASL translation.
“In the past year, I have moved between two vastly different environments – a woodworking fellowship in urban Philadelphia and my home studio outside of Fairbanks – and been imprinted with their unique visual energies and abundant sound. Recent pieces convey the shaking of elevated trains, the buzz of insects and heat rising from a weed-infested ditch, urban demolition and construction, endless traffic and the places where nature breaks through human control. I’ve applied the same attention to action and noise in a more familiar Alaskan setting – water and ice surge down a creek, the backup alarm for heavy equipment at a nearby mine duets with a woodpecker, dogs’ voices split the cold, the downtown power plant and rail yard trade off in conversation, trees crack and fall in a windstorm.
Marquetry, a woodworking technique where images are created by precisely cutting and fitting together pieces of wood veneer, affords the opportunity to build a piece with many parts. I stretch traditional marquetry methods to incorporate printmaking, carving, and layering, experimenting with the material in a less precious, less predictable way. I invite momentum into the work, sometimes conflict. As I shape and fit disparate elements into a singular piece – a process containing its own soundtrack of sander, scroll saw, and vacuum press – I give my attention to the beautiful friction where opposing things bump up against each other. Can a person love both urban and natural settings? Can an artwork contain the imprints of overlapping memories? Is there anything in life that’s not a contradiction? I’m still very much in the middle of this work, still learning what this technique can do, still surprised by how these pieces can fit together in new ways.” – Sara Tabbert, Artist Statement
“There are many things that I am inspired by: old New England tobacco barns, the color of honey, glacial ice, Sung Dynasty pottery, Native Alaskan ivory bird carvings, children’s book illustrators such as Harrison Cady, Tasha Tudor and Jerry Pinkney, Danish furniture, cooking, dodo birds, redpolls, the work of French automobile body designers the 1930s and 40s such as Gabriel Voisin and Jacques Soutchik.…. As I am working in the studio, my interests blend together and emerge within the world of functional objects. Simple and clear statements that speak of my desire to tell a story that will somehow stir the souls of others.” – Steven Godfrey, Artist Statement
