Bio
Augusta Sparks Farnum is a photographer and sculptor living and working in Brooklin, Maine, where she is also the mother of grown children. She received her Bachelors from Bard College, a Masters from University of Florida, a Maine Arts and Humanities in Medicine certificate and Intermedia MFA from University of Maine. The landscape, edge effect, and non-linear storytelling are essential elements that run throughout her work. Farnum is a recipient of the University of Florida Dr. John Graham-Pole Scholarship and the Trustee Scholarship Award from the University of Maine, where she served as teaching assistant for the Maine Arts and Humanities in Medicine program. Farnum founded the Carnegie Picture Lab, an arts non-profit, and the social prescription program Arts In Health: First Aid Art Kits for the quarantined population during Covid in Walla Walla, Washington. Recent exhibitions include the Parsonage Gallery in Searsport Maine, and presented at the Space gallery, in Portland Maine and has been published in Art New England, Critical Correspondence Movement Research, and ArtPlace.
Artist Statement
Inspired by the constructs of storytelling, Augusta Sparks Farnum generates a library of sculptures and gestural imagery to assemble installations. Her work comes from the edge of the forest to the edge of the sea and is informed by light, shadow and the landscape, as she is a fifth generation photographer. Working with lines, both metaphorically and literally, references the duality of magic and realism. Augusta defines her process as sense making, or an enacted, in motion thinking in the creative practice to come towards an understanding. Materiality is an impermanent vehicle in the work. It is the attention to the contamination where things meet, that directs the sense making.
This attention, to where things meet, extends to collaboration and intersections of fields. Historically, Augusta Sparks has worked with doctors, scientists, engineers, foresters, and other artists. The MFA thesis research considers the sense making process for creatives, and a field guide accompanies her MFA thesis work.
Thesis Work
Previous Works
Dream of A stranger, in the dreams of a tree. Detail from Walking at Night, Installation. Softwood nanofiber and hemp cord. Parsonage Gallery. Searsport, Maine 2023
unBecoming Control: Part one. Intrusions performance. IMRC April 18, 2023. Objects of Softwood Nanocellulose, Irish Moss Carrageenan, Silk, Hemp, and Metal Clips.
Placarding Painting Debut #2, Augusta Sparks Farnum. Acrylic paint, Sign board, String, Alter/Altar, Plywood, Beech Tree Painting, Chair. Open Studio. UMaine 2022.
Inside the forest. Digital Print. 37 ¾” x 44” Beech Grove Brooklin Maine. 2022
