Biography
Sara Lisch is a San Francisco Bay Area artist whose work emerges from inner listening, personal mythology, and the sense that something larger moves through the making.
Born in Sechelt, British Columbia, she grew up in a creatively charged family—her mother a children’s singer-songwriter, her father an artist involved with the Diggers, and both of her grandmothers artists. From childhood she built imaginative worlds that later became the symbolic, intuitive language of her art.
After traveling through Europe and the Middle East and living on a kibbutz, she took part in two historic peace efforts: The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament (1986) and the American–Soviet Peace Walk in Russia (1988). These experiences shaped her belief in endurance, empathy, and human connection.
She studied ceramics, drawing, and painting at The Evergreen State College. After college, she lived off the grid in rural Washington for eight years, rebuilding a home by hand and firing her sculptures in an old gas kiln. Those years taught patience, presence, and the ability to let a form emerge in its own time.
Today she works in layered hand-cut paper and paint on panel, creating figures that explore inner states—thresholds, moments of becoming, and the place where the seen meets the felt. Her work has been exhibited nationally at the Flint Institute of Arts (MI), Fuller Craft Museum (MA), William Traver Gallery (WA), and Santa Fe Clay (NM).
She is an Associate Member of Mercury 20 Gallery and the Founder/Curator of Cedar Street Gallery in Berkeley. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband, their cat, and a young puppy; her son is currently in college.
Artist Statement
I work in layered hand-cut paper and paint on panel to explore transformation, intuition, and renewal. Each piece begins with a drawing of the figure, which becomes a framework for reconstruction—a place where color, texture, and shape find rhythm and meaning.
My early years working in clay continue to shape my practice. As a sculptor, I learned through repetition, collapse, rebuilding, and the slow evolution of form. That physical sensibility remains central: the presence of the body, the weight of gesture, and the expressive possibilities of surface.
I am drawn to materials that already hold history—fragments of wallpaper, drawings, and found paper that carry their own sense of time. Through layering and reconstruction, I build images that exist between the visible and the unseen, where the spiritual and everyday quietly meet.
The figures that emerge are not portraits but thresholds—places where life feels both delicate and resilient. My intention is to evoke rather than explain, creating work that invites reflection, recognition, and a sense of connection to something larger and still unfolding.
CV
Selected Exhibitions
Museum & Juried Exhibitions
2025 — Making Her Mark, Flint Institute of Arts, MI
2025 — A Generous Kingdom, Petaluma Arts Center, CA
2025 — National Juried Exhibition, Arc Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2025 — Verum Ultimum Juried Exhibition, Portland, OR
2016 — Function, Form and Fantasy, Flint Institute of Arts, MI
2008 — Cats, Santa Fe Clay, NM
Additional exhibitions include Fuller Craft Museum (MA), William Traver Gallery (WA/IL), and the Society of Arts and Crafts Museum (MA).
Solo Exhibitions
2024 — Muse, Mercury 20 Gallery, Oakland
2023 — Dream Garden, Mercury 20 Gallery, Oakland
2021 — Metamorphosis, Mercury 20 Gallery, Oakland
2020 — Belongings, Sara Lisch Gallery, Berkeley
2020 — Forest Edge, Sara Lisch Gallery, Berkeley
2019 — Interwoven, Mercury 20 Gallery, Oakland
2017 — Bite Me, Mercury 20 Gallery, Oakland
Selected Group Exhibitions
2020 — 20/20 Revision, Mercury 20 Gallery
2020 — Dare, Mercury 20 Gallery
2019 — Truth, Mercury 20 Gallery
2019 — Self Portraits in the Age of the Selfie, Mercury 20
2019 — Go Figure, Sebastopol Center for the Arts
2018 — Elevate, Adobe Art Gallery
2018 — Small Works Show, Mercury 20 Gallery
2018 — Melting Point, Mercury 20 Gallery
2017 — 20/20 Vision, Mercury 20
Curatorial Projects
2020–Present — Founder & Curator, Cedar Street Gallery, Berkeley
2020 — Director, The Sara Lisch Gallery, Berkeley
Publications & Press
Circle Quarterly Art Review (Fall 2024, Spring 2018)
48hills, Mary Corbin, 2021
Function, Form, and Fantasy, Janet Koplos, 2016
SFMOMA Tumblr: Boy/Girl; Whirligig
500 Figures in Clay, Vol. 2, Lark Books, 2014
Collections
Dr. Robert & Deanna Harris Burger
Diane & Sandy Besser Collection
Dale & Doug Anderson
Education
B.A., The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA