Paper, paper and more paper. Sara Caswell-Pearce is a Cincinnati-based collage artist, printer and graphic designer who cannot get enough paper. Old paper. Grungy paper. Peculiar paper. Paper retrieved from trash baskets and dumpsters. Paper spotted at book sales and flea markets. Paper unloaded by friends and strangers.

Her passion is for finding antique images, and helping them tell a new story. She does this via snarky greeting cards and complex, layered fine-art collages in which she combines antique and vintage materials with hand-painted and hand-printed backgrounds, and handmade paper.

Her work is generally narrative, with a feminist slant. She has recently been exploring paper cutting, 3-D paper projects, silkscreen printing, and book structures.

She attended Rutgers University for her undergraduate and graduate degrees, and received chef training at The Restaurant School (Philadelphia). After an array of careers (public relations, libraries, restaurants, journalism) she became a full-time, professional artist.

She is the founder and owner of Paper with a Past, and co-founder of Gallery 708 in downtown Cincinnati.

Her collages have been shown at the Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery, Art Academy of Cincinnati, Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati), KMAC Museum (Louisville), Manifest Gallery, Mount Saint Joseph University, The Carnegie, University of Cincinnati, and are in the collection of the University of Cincinnati’s School of Medicine. She currently has collages in “Still They Persist” and “Tripletta,” exhibits that are traveling nationally.

In the summer of 2016, she had her first solo museum exhibition at Colorado’s Loveland Museum of Art. In 2015, she was awarded an Aid to Individual Artists Grant from Summerfair Cincinnati.

She is the co-author of Harper Ever After: The Early Work of Charlie and Edie Harper (Pomegranate Art Books, 2015). She recently relocated her workspace to The Essex Studios in Walnut Hills.

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