What You Carry:

Hike your own hike…it will change you. 

– Sarah A Meyer  

Born in the Midwest, in the city of St. Louis, Sarah A Meyer is inspired by the empty spaces and the stories told by the folk in often overlooked places. Inspired by her mother who dropped her off on the north side of the Grand Canyon when she was fifteen and picked her up three days later on the south side, she believes in serious Type II Fun, and that everyone has a story to tell. Also inspired by the Fun Scale, developed by author Matt Samet (2011, Washington: The Mountaineers Books.) in his Climbing Dictionary: Mountaineering Slang, Terms, Neologisms & Lingo. According to Dr. Rainer Newberry (1985), a geology professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, “Type I” is true fun, “Type II Fun” is hard work that can be liberating and yields a sense of accomplishment, and “Type III Fun” is not fun at all and may be dangerous. In reference to “Type II”: “We just have to do the hard work to get there and be still enough to listen.” Her studio practice is based on quiet observation, writing, and documentation. Her medium varies from painting and photography, to book design and printing.   

“I started backpacking as a young girl when it was the cheapest way to get out of the city with equipment leftover from my grandfather and father’s years in the service. A light pack often weighed over 50 pounds (23 kg) without water. Two knee injuries later, I have reduced the pack weight to under 30 pounds (14 kg), so that I might continue to observe, document, and reflect upon experiences in the outdoors. Each backpacking trip is a way to engage with the natural world, learn about the geography, and listen to elders. Walking into natural spaces is a history lesson and quiet activism, one step at a time. My work is strongly directed by the stories we tell ourselves and others in these outdoor spaces and how they impact our internal sense of place.” 

For several years, Los Angeles-based artist, Sarah A. Meyer, has been hiking and backpacking to seemingly forgotten places and observing the cultural stewardship of open spaces. During her professional leave, she intensified her exploration to include routes traversed by ancient peoples since the Paleolithic period. Using only what she can carry, Meyer provides an intimate window into the wild places that connect people to the natural world. Using diffused colors and the written form, the culmination is an interdisciplinary body of work that chronicles the plein air experience and poetically maps Meyer’s internal transformation as a designer. Using watercolor, Letterpress, video, photography, and artifact collecting, Meyer presents a multi-dimensional, and interactive “collage” of media to project her experience, while giving viewers several intricate windows of reflection. 

She currently serves as professor and a program coordinator of Visual Communication Design in California Poly Pomona's Department of Art and is a member of the board for the National Council of Art Administrators and an ambassador for the Innovation Center for Design Excellence. 

An ancient metaphor: thought is a thread, and the raconteur is a spinner of yarns –but the true storyteller, the poet, is a weaver. The scribes made this old and audible abstraction into a new and visible fact. After long practice, their work took on such an even, flexible texture that they called the written page a textus, which means cloth. 

– Robert Bringhurst