Sarah Crooks Flaire is a painter who maintains a studio in Riverside.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN AN ARTIST?
“When I was 15, I started taking art classes. It took me about 10 years after I graduated to say I was an artist. It takes a lot of work and discipline to create anything enduring.”
WHAT’S HER GENRE?
Utilizing recycled materials, Flaire’s work runs from large-scale public sculpture and murals to hand-sewn collages and intimate body art. She has also experimented with multi-media, graphite pencil drawing, print making, jewelry, wire and metal work, wood, concrete and plaster.
IS IT DIFFICULT TO
EMPLOY DIFFERENT MEDIUMS?
“I’m one of those people that has an infinity for a lot of different materials. I taught myself how to carve slate, learned how to paint and restore stained glass and have worked with glass blowers. The way I divide space in my paintings translates easily into stained glass windows but is very labor intensive. The materials have to fit the expression. The more diverse they are, the more diverse your voice is for what you want to say.”
WHICH IS YOUR FAVORITE?
“My preferred medium is oil paintings. I like to draw. Since I became pregnant I had to stop a lot of things because of the potential risk to the baby.”
TRINKETS
The National Endowment for the Arts partnered with the Jacksonville Community Foundation to give her a grant, which she used to buy equipment to support her production of artistic jewelry. She even designed her own engagement ring.
WHY CHOOSE NATURE AS A SUBJECT?
“I have been painting and drawing flowers for two years. I moved back [to Jacksonville] because of my husband and partly to be in a more natural setting than the big city. The perseverance of nature is very humbling to me.”
WHAT MESSAGE ARE YOU TRYING TO CONVEY THROUGH YOUR WORK?
“With my last show, Small Things, I wanted to change perspectives. Instead of a human looking down on something, he is face-to-face with a plant form so the scale is switched. In Western cultures, we’re taught that man was created above everything else and that he is entitled to control it. I don’t think that relationship is right.”
WITCH HUNT
Nest 89, a sculpture honoring women and children residing at the YWCA, was constructed by herself and volunteers and placed at the Landing. On the final night of its showing, someone set it on fire. “Public reaction was strong. Either they recognized it was a nest or thought it was a witch’s pyre. It made a poetic statement.”
MAKING A STATEMENT
WITHOUT SAYING A WORD
“I’m a feminist. I see drawing a seedling as political as building a nest for the homeless by paying attention to life in a positive way. Everything now is so fast and temporary. When I was younger I thought I had to be out there marching. I did a lot of that. At this point in life I can’t be out there waving a flag and being intent on the images I’m making.”
HOMETOWN
Born in Lynchburg, Va., but reared in Jacksonville.
EDUCATION
Pratt Institute in Brooklyn was her first contact with formal art studies. She received a bachelor’s degree in painting from the University of North Florida and studied botanical illustration at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx.
WHAT IMPACT DID THE BIG APPLE HAVE?
“I was in New York for five years. My last series I was working off linoleum — I printed my own body on it. Over time, with so much stimulation and activity there, it made my work change to a more realistic, traditional rendering.”
WHERE HAS SHE SHOWN HER WORK?
At the James Weldon Johnson Festival, Flaire participated as a visiting mural artist. As the artist-in-residence at Jan Hus Presbyterian in New York, she coordinated the Furniture Project, which involved recycling furniture for the needy. Her latest show, Small Things, was on display at FCCJ’s Kent Campus Gallery in November. Galleries, studios, museums, schools and theaters throughout Florida, New Jersey, Virginia, Vermont, New York City and Chicago have showcased her works as well. She has over three dozen exhibitions to her credit.
WHO COLLECTS HER WORK?
AT&T, Jacksonville Historical Society, Pace Center for Girls, the City of Orlando, Larry Wilson Design Associates and individuals in North America and France.
MYTH
“If you’re an artist you can be a commercial artist where your main focus is pleasing the market or you can be a teacher where your focus is pleasing the administration. If you’re a studio artist, the focus is on pleasing yourself but you have to find another way to make money. The stereotype of the starving artist that’s maniacal in their passion is an image that is very Hollywood because it’s not sustainable. You can’t survive that way.”
ARTSY JOBS ALL OVER THE MAP
Flaire has been employed as an assistant decorative painter at Design Arts Studio, technical assistant for Jacksonville University’s glass studio and as a fine arts adjunct professor of drawing at FCCJ. She has painted walls and ceilings with her murals and even produced and restored stained glass. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art she worked as a security guard, picking up an informal art history education wandering the galleries. Visitors to the Jacksonville Historical Center can spot her work, which chronicles local history from pre-Columbian days to the 1950s.
WHAT IS THE APPEAL OF ART?
“It can be anything you want it to be. As people, the biggest struggle is to connect to another person or to the world so we don’t feel isolated. All art, whether it’s music, dance, theater, is the closest tangible expression of what’s going on inside a person or how they see they world so there is a connection.”
WHAT’S SATISFYING ABOUT BEING AN ARTIST?
“The process itself is rewarding. If I’m very involved in creating art, I lose myself and don’t experience myself as ego. I am in a place where none of that matters and it feels very good. When I was a younger artist I would get in ‘the zone’ and it’s like being on drugs. As I’ve gotten older, it’s harder to get in the zone because more there are more things pulling on you.”
WHAT’S THE HARD PART?
“Expecting the world to understand. Making a living and selling work is hard.”
FAMILY
Flaire and her husband Olivier reside in Riverside. They are expecting their first child in April.
HOBBIES
Reading, gardening, cooking, traveling and Thai restaurants are personal favorites.
—by Monica Chamness