Sarah Odens

Sarah Odens (b. 1990, Sioux Falls, South Dakota) is an artist, curator, and Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Exhibitions Lectures at Auburn University, AL.

She received her MFA with a concentration in painting from Michigan State University (2015), and her BA in Art and English from the University of Sioux Falls in Sioux Falls, SD (2012). After completing her MFA, she returned to Sioux Falls for a position as Assistant Curator of the Washington Pavilion Visual Arts Center, where she was involved in mounting more than 45 exhibitions. In 2017, Odens was appointed Curator of the Visual Arts Center; she curated more than 25 exhibitions.

Odens has exhibited her work throughout the Midwest and South at venues including the Sioux Falls Arts Council, the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (Grand Rapids, MI), Spring Hill College (Mobile, AL), 311 Gallery (Raleigh, NC), James May Gallery (online), and Michigan State University’s Union Gallery. Her work was featured in Studio Visit Magazine vol. 47 (2021). She has also presented about her teaching and research at conferences for organizations including CAA, SECAC, and the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States.

Sarah’s work was featured ‘Wish List’ on view December 9-22, 2023.

“My paintings transform images of domestic perfection into abstracted musings on the joy and the futility of chasing that very perfection. My uneasy fascination with online domesticity—often false, rigid, staged, or idealized—permeates my paintings and speaks to the rough, undone edges of crumbling cakes and the dissolving fragments of floral arrangements.”

Sarah Odens