ShepArts
About
ShepArts is operated by Sarah Shepherd. She is a ceramicist and painter based in Atlanta, GA.
While in college earning her degree in Theatre at Georgia Southern University, Sarah began taking ceramics and drawing classes for her Studio Art minor as a junior. During an advanced drawing course her senior year, Sarah dove into how art can be influenced by and also healing for mental health. Using her own experiences and creating a portfolio of work depicting personal struggles, Sarah knew that having a career in art is what she wanted her main focus in life to be.
In the spring of 2021, Sarah began working with a pottery painting studio in Marietta to get back to her creative roots. During the two and a half years she worked there, she taught summer camps, lead kids classes, and built up experience working with studio maintenance. On the side Sarah and a friend in the studio began to work around Atlanta selling their art at community markets. By the end of 2021 ShepArts was born.
Over the last three years, Sarah has focused on growing her art practice and building her home studio. After purchasing her first kiln, she dove back into ceramics headfirst. Sarah has participated in multiple art exhibitions in the Atlanta area on top of vending at markets.
Much of Sarah's influence comes from the world around her. Inspired by nature and the weird things around us, she likes to add a hint of strange in all of her work. Sarah creates much of her work using hand-building techniques and bringing an illustrative look from her paintings into the ceramic work.
Artist Statement
In an attempt to have a little separation between my work as an art vendor and as a fine artist, I express my influences differently. While a lot of my work is heavily rooted in my interest in weird nature and personal struggles with mental health, I am also very influenced by the surrealist movement. Most of the pieces I create for art markets are more illustrative and playful, such as scenes of frogs doing human activities and planters with faces on them. On the other hand, the surrealist element plays a bit more in my exhibition works. Using the natural elements seen in a lot of my works (flowers, mushrooms, general overgrowth, etc.) and combining it with expressive portraits and everyday views, I aim to represent different elements of mental growth and experiences. The use of familiar places, like a bathroom, but creating an unsettling environment, or using portraits and, either in color theory or positioning, creating a somewhat somber attitude in my works. While those themes are something I reflect for personal expression, it’s also important that they are not overwhelmingly specific and allow the audience to make their own inference. Which goes hand in hand with the importance I believe art has as a form of therapy to the artist and the viewer.
Artist CV
Exhibitions
2016 Juried Undergraduate Exhibition: Center for Art & Theatre, Georgia Southern
2017 Undergraduate Juried Exhibition: Center for Art and Theatre, Georgia Southern University
2022 Vinyl III: Revolutions Exhibition: Arches Brewing Art, Arches Brewing
2022 Not of this World Exhibition: Mable House Art Center
2022 Identity Juried Exhibition: Heart, Soul, and Art
2022 Something Haunting is Brewing Exhibition: Arches Brewing Art, Arches Brewing
2023 Vinyl IV: Flip Side: Arches Brewing Art, Arches Brewing
2023 Vivid Lucidity II: Arches Brewing Art, Arches Brewing
2023 Down the Rabbit Hole: Red Hare Still on the Square, Sudnat Studios
2024 Don't Make It Weird: Arches Brewing Art, Arches Brewing
2024 End over End: A Bicycle Art Exhibition: Arches Brewing Art, Arches Brewing
2025 Vinyl V: Cut Corner: Arches Brewing Art, Arches Brewing