Visual artist Sarah Crowner (b. 1974, Philadelphia) makes paintings, ceramics, sculptures, installations, and theater sets. Her large-scale sewn canvases display a fluency in mid-twentieth-century art, artists, and architecture, with a particular regard for geometric abstraction and color field compositions. Crowner’s rigorous practice has long engaged thematic research with an abiding interest in materials, craft, and their related histories and processes.

Architecture and space are as significant to Crowner’s practice as is painting. Her tiled platforms, stone sculptures, and site-specific wall pieces transform spaces into three-dimensional experiences in which the viewer processes the environment as one autonomous artwork. Her patterns, drawn equally from the natural world and historic sources, create an entryway between the art object and the context, enabling the viewer to literally step inside her work. Crowner has also created set designs for dance and theatrical performance, which further underscore her desire and ability to envelop the viewer in her vision, and blur distinctions between various media and scales.