Yoder Catalog Update by Page Bond Gallery

EMBLEM SARAH BOYTS YODER

Front and Back Cover Image: Laurie Fisher, Float 2 , 2020, Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches

EMBLEM

SARAH BOYTS YODER FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 5 - SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2021

GALLERY HOURS TUESDAY - FRIDAY 11 AM - 5 PM AND BY APPOINTMENT

1625 WEST MAIN STREET RICHMOND, VA 2322O P: 804 359 3633

SARAH BOYTS YODER EMBLEM

In this new body of work, created during an artist residency in June of 2021, Boyts Yoder returns to her primary image, emblem and icon: the Guide. Originally found within the pages of a children’s book over 10 years ago, this elemental symbol perseveres and continues to give rise to a deeper and more complex visual vocabulary that forms the foundation of all the artists work. The Guide emblem is the artist and the viewer, both portrait and self-portrait. It is a reflection, a witness, a companion, and sometimes forms a chorus. It is the foundation upon which a hopeful and beautiful world is built. In these environments, the artist hopes the viewer will find escape through portals, mirrors, and joyfully wild, imagined landscapes. This work represents a very specific place and time (June in Texas), but also proof that pursuing an obsession with a singular form can lead one towards multiplicity, not away from it. Boyts Yoder states: “When looking at these paintings today, I see manifestations of what I wish for myself, and for others, in a world that can so easily make one feel separated, alone and exhausted. They are talismans to call forth guidance, energy, protection, shelter, and escape. Emblems of brightness, strength, joy, and color.” 4

Environment 2 (Balloon Garden), 2021 Acrylic and tempera on canvas 65 x 56 inches $6000 6

Environment 4 (Desert Green), 2021 Acrylic and spray paint on canvas 63 x 52 inches $6000 8

Environment 5 (Sea Queen), 2021 Acrylic on canvas 60 x 64 inches $6000 10

Persimmon Canyon, 2019 Acrylic, spray paint, paint stick on linen 64 x 50 inches $6000 12

Double Emblem, 2021 Mixed media on canvas 36 x 63 inches $5000 14

Inside Outside Guide, 2021 Mixed media on canvas 46 x 64 inches SOLD 16

Unified Guide, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 42 x 64 inches $5000 18

Bigger Figure (Blue), 2021 Acrylic, spray paint, tempera on canvas 39 x 31 inches $3500 20

Emblem Grid, 2021 Mixed media on paper 22 x 15 inches each $1000 each 22

Emblem Statue with Pink, 2021 Mixed media on paper 22 x 15 inches $1000 each 24

Night Emblem, 2021 Mixed media on paper 22 x 15 inches $1000 26

Emblems on Pink and Sand, 2021 Mixed media on paper 22 x 15 inches $1000 28

Emblems in Pink, 2021 Mixed media on paper 22 x 15 inches $1000 30

Unified Mind, 2021 Mixed media on paper 22 x 15 inches $1000 32

Split Emblems, 2021 Mixed media on paper 22 x 15 inches $1000 34

Two Sided Emblems with Sand, 2021 Mixed media on paper 22 x 15 inches SOLD 36

Green Emblems with Double Moons, 2021 Mixed media on paper 22 x 15 inches $1000 38

Emblems with Sun and Moon, 2021 Mixed media on paper 22 x 15 inches $1000 40

THREAD

By Priyanka Champaneri EMBLEM: One symbol that stands for a much larger abstract concept There is a shape Sarah calls upon frequently in her body of work. A shape, or a shadow. Sometimes it is dark, solid, sphinx-like. Other times it is fleeting, a streaked apparition. It’s simplistic to say the shape is no different from what I found her doing when I met her almost a decade ago during an artist residency. I was struggling to write in a dark studio, mind barren, the document on my laptop screen blank and resigned. That night a few visual artists opened their workspaces to visitors. I crossed Sarah’s threshold, and all my senses opened wide. Paper scraps everywhere, cutouts covering worktables, light washing over the irregular shapes tacked to the wall and stiff with layers of paint, and color and color and color. Raspberry pink, primary green, sky blue, half-filled water cups and rainbowed brushes swirled with a glorious slurry. “Nothing is precious,” she said. “If I lose something, I can make it again. I can make it better.” Bright, magnetic, there was an orange paint stick that she employed back then in rough straight downward strokes—primal, she called it, mimicking the motion for me, and I could imagine some ancient ancestor making that same motion for the very first time, marveling at how hands could grasp a tool, could move that tool and make an impression, leave behind a marking that would carry one meaning at inception, accrue layers of meaning through millennia. There is memory in that mark. There is memory in Sarah’s work. When I see the shape she refers to as the Guide, I remember the children’s book she had in her studio all those years ago. She showed me the picture of a dark oval with a darker circle off to the side. The back of a woman’s head, a low knot at the nape of her neck. This is what the book told us that shape was, and in that context there was nothing else it could be. Woman, nape, neck, knot. Woman, nape, neck, knot. Learn a language, learn a principle, commit it to memory: repetition can render a thing familiar, can bind it within its stated definition. But repetition isn’t just a tool for familiarization—it can do the opposite, can break form down. Write out woman, nape, neck, knot, write it 100 times. Then look at those words 42

from a distance. Are they still the sum of their meaning? Or are they instead lines, curves, an orderly system of markings that could be etched in the dust and blown away, or calcify and remain for centuries, waiting to be discovered by the curious? So, with Sarah—two shapes, always attached to each other, one blooming upward, the other dropping down, a sharp line cutting off the bottom. It can be prominent, repeated, the focus of the piece. Or it might drift off the side, aloof, unable to commit to a full appearance. Sometimes the shape is not there, but an echo is. I find myself looking for it, the familiar grounding of it, and there—a sharp corner, a familiar curve. Is that it? Look long enough, absorb the repetition enough, and soon that shape becomes so familiar it blends into the background. But refocus, and it’s there—always, it’s there. A memory shimmering to the surface, or a premonition, hazy and rendered clear only in hindsight. I am someone who believes in reincarnation, in the fact of many lives stretching beyond this one, many lived before. But I also believe all of us inhabit multiple lives within a single lifetime, age encasing us in another hard nesting doll shell, all the people we once were nestled inside. No matter how layered we become, there is always that central thread of self, either quietly coiled within us, or taut and assertive. Pull on that thread—out of that strata, what rises to the top? Look at the paintings, see what rises. Memory, and self. Memory of what you were, memory of the person you wanted to be, observed by the person you are now, in this moment. And watching over all—the future you, the self who hasn’t emerged. Not yet. EMBLEM: How much one shape has come to hold or contain even in growing simplicity Priyanka Champaneri’s debut novel, The City of Good Death, won the 2018 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction’s 2021 First Novel Prize. She has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts numerous times, including in 2013, when she first met Sarah Boyts Yoder.

SARAH BOYTS YODER Lives and works in Charlottesville, VA

Education 2006 MFA, Painting, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 2003 BFA, Painting, Eastern New Mexico University, Portales, NM Select Solo Exhibitions 2021 EMBLEM, Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA 2021 Meantime, Jag Gallery, Key West, FL 2019 Look At All There Is To Have, Saint Cloche, Sydney, Australia 2019 FLEET, Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA 2018 bathymetry, Sawhill Memorial Gallery, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 2018 Trove, Charleston Music Hall, Charleston, SC 2018 Never No Horizons, Beverly Street Studio, Staunton, VA 2017 Forget Your Perfect Offering, Studio IX, Charlottesville, VA 2015 Elbows On The Table, Welcome Gallery, Charlottesville, VA 2015 A Single Jumpy Heart, The Garage, Charlottesville, VA 2015 Light In June, Blenheim Vineyards, Charlottesville, VA 2014 Insist/Resist, Amuse Restaurant at VMFA, Richmond, VA 2013 Nothing Passes, This Too Shall Pass, Jericho Gallery, Charleston, SC 2012 Merge/Emerge, The Real Estate Studio, Charleston, SC 2011 Reunion, Flagship Gallery, Charleston, SC 2011 Nice Work, Jericho Gallery, Charleston, SC 2008 Reveal/Recover, Spark Gallery & Studios, Charleston, SC Select Group Exhibitions 2021 Made in VA, Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA 2021 In Her World, Voltz Clarke Gallery, New York, NY 2020 The Stars We Steer By, Curating Contemporary 2020 Looking Out, Stay Home Gallery 2020 Glean, Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA 2019 Ship of Fellows, Rawls Museum, Courtland, VA 2018 Gather, Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA 2018 Hot Hot Hot, Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA 2018 Summertime, Les Yeux du Monde Gallery, Charlottesville, VA 2018 Fool, Juice Box Gallery, Denver, CO

2018 Mother, Mother, Studio IX, Charlottesville, VA 2017 At Home, Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville, TN 2017 Overture, Pleat Gallery 2017 New Waves, VA Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA 2016 Contemporary Art Now, The Women’s Caucus for Art, Target Gallery, Alexandria, VA 2016 You, Me, We, The Garage, Charlottesville, VA 2016 Adherence, Tenth Street Warehouse, Charlottesville, VA 2015 Just Plane Rotten, Mist Gallery, Richmond, VA 2014 Material Matters, 10 Storehouse Row, Charleston, SC 2014 You Are Surrounded, Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, VA 2014 Primary Urges, Honfleur Gallery, Washington, DC 2014 Contemporaries, Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC Grants and Awards 2021 100W Corsicana, Corsicana, TX 2019 100W Corsicana, Corsicana, TX 2018 100W Corsicana, Corsicana, TX 2018 Finalist, Bethesda Painting Awards 2017 100W Corsicana, Corsicana, TX 2017 Semi finalist, Trawick Art Prize 2014 Professional Fellowship Award in Painting, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA 2014 Residency at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Amherst, VA 2013 Residency at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Amherst, VA 2005 VA Invitational Graduate Art Students Forum, 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA Collections Baker Motor Company, Charleston, SC Boars Head Resort & Spa, Charlottesville, VA Capitol One, Richmond, VA Common House, Charlottesville, VA Emmeline Hotel, Charleston, SC FS2, Charleston, SC Stitch Design Company Partners, Charleston, SC Tenth Street Warehouse, Charlottesville, VA

PUBLISHED ON THE OCCASSION OF THE EXHIBITION

SARAH BOYTS YODER EMBLEM

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 5 - SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2021 PAGE BOND GALLERY 1625 WEST MAIN STREET RICHMOND, VA 23220 TEL 804 359 3633 www.pagebondgallery.com CATALOG LAYOUT BY MADISON DALTON COVER: SARAH BOYTS YODER, ENVIRONMENT 2 (BALLOON GARDEN), 2021, ACRYLIC AND TEMPERA ON CANVAS, 65 X 56 INCHES

PAGE BOND GALLERY www.pagebondgallery.com