Sabra Field
American artist and printmaker
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sabra Field is an American artist. She primarily is a print artist.[1][2] She has been described as the "Grant Wood of Vermont".[3]
Early life and education
Field was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and was raised in New York.[4] She graduated from Middlebury College in 1957, where she majored in art.[5] She was mentored there by artist Arthur K.D. Healy.[6] She was the college's first student to major in art.[5] She graduated from Wesleyan University with a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) in 1959. There she was mentored by Russell T. Limbach, who introduced her to printmaking.[6][7]
Career
In 1969, Field divorced her first husband and moved from Connecticut to Vermont with her two sons. They moved into the Tontine Building, a former 19th-century tavern in East Barnard.[5][3] There she began working regularly on woodblock prints. She found Vermont conducive to work, stating that she "became part of a different culture where I could live and work at home in a quiet hamlet that was good for kids and without pretense."[3]
In 1975, the Vermont Bicentennial poster contest selected one of her works for an exhibition in Washington, D.C.[8] The selection led to several commissions, including a 1977 series titled Mountain Suite for Vermont Life magazine.[9][10]
In 1991, the United States Postal Service released a postage stamp commemorating the bicentennial of Vermont's admission to the Union in 1791 as the 14th state. It featured an image by Field of a "red barn, blue sky and green hills." More than 60 million of the stamps were sold.[3][11]
In 2002, Field was the subject of the book The Art of Place and in 2004, the book In Sight.[12]
In 2010, Field installed a large-scale outdoor mural titled Cosmic Geometry on the east wall of the Wright Memorial Theatre on the Middlebury College campus.[13]
In 2015, the film Sabra: The Life & Work of Printmaker Sabra Field, a documentary exploring Field's life, was released. It was directed by Bill Phillips, a film professor at Dartmouth College.[14][3]
In 2016, Field and Julia Alvarez published the children's picture book Where Do They Go?[15][16][17]
In 2017, a retrospective show of Field's work was held at the Middlebury College Museum of Art. It featured 100 works from 1962 to the present.[3]
Selected commissions
- 1977 Mountain Suite[9][10]
- 2018 Winter Twilight Norwich University[18]
Awards and honors
In 1984, Middlebury College awarded Field its Alumni Achievement Award. In 1991, the College awarded her an Honorary Doctor of Arts and she was named an Extraordinary Vermonter by Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin. In 1999, she received the Vermont Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts from Governor Howard Dean.[4]