BY WENDY BOWMAN BUTLER
October 21, 2021


Guten Co. translates to Good Co., and that sentiment emanates from every surface of artist Sarah Sauer’s crisp, sun-soaked San Antonio studio. Sarah smiles from her eyes and greets me with the specific kind of graciousness and hospitality found in a Texas Hill Country woman. She is patient, welcoming, and cheerful with her guests, yet extremely concentrated and rigid in her work. She is the type of person who operates with intention and takes great care of everything in her space. Her tools are venerated and nurtured, which creates a cyclical energy—the love she puts into her artwork emits back out from the pieces themselves.

Her ceramics are organized pristinely in rows by color and form. Velvet objects hardened and kissed with directional light cast soft shadows. Cobalt curves perch quietly on solid black shelves next to terra cotta mug handles shaped like arched doorways in an ancient building. Two industrial letterpress machines sit proudly in the corner by her desk. The paper products are like icing smoothed on a decorated cake. The graphics bite 3-dimensionally into the stock mimicking the sculptural elements of her ceramics. All of her work sits still, thoughtful and peaceful—awaiting to be picked up, cherished and used for a lifetime.

WENDY BOWMAN BUTLER: I can’t believe it’s been so long.

SARAH SAUER: I know!

WBB: I’m really glad to see you. How have you been?

SS: Good! It’s been busy. Kind of just head down, focusing on the work, taking solace in work, which feels good to me. It’s always kind of a natural zone. 

WBB: You produce more work than most people I’ve ever seen. 

SS: [Laughs] I love it! Continually auditing processes and efficiency is exciting to me. This year has been a lot. I moved in the right direction with all of that.

WBB: You got a lot of time for no people to come in and distract you.

SS: Truly. 

WBB: When and why did you start making your work? 

SS: I started taking art classes young. I think it was just kind of a nature thing at a certain point. For as long as I can remember I thought: I want to be an artist and that was my answer when people would ask. As I developed I got this more technical mind too. The traditional arts didn’t always seem like a shoo-in. I did all of the fundamentals but I was like nothing is hitting me perfectly. Then when I started realizing: print-making exists, ceramics exist, there is a lot of technicality, there is a lot of process, you must have very fine attention to detail… That’s when I was like ooo these are my things. I started taking classes in ceramics when I was in high school. I didn’t take it terribly seriously but then went to art school, bounced around a bit, and collected a tool belt of different mediums. I got into print-making—that’s what I was formally trained in. But kind of balanced both throughout those years. Then when I got out of school I decided I wanted to give it a try and see if I could do it on my own. People expressed interest in my work. There is a lot of freedom and power in having your own machine that you’re running and producing lines of work—it sells—then your shelves are empty and you do it again.  That’s what excited me about it and I’ve just been growing it.

WBB: I recall you telling me that you got into the letter-pressing because you had access to a machine and maybe you were apprenticing someone?

SS: One of the professors that I studied under in college was a master printer. So that’s a certification you can get with a certain number of years of master printing and technical knowledge. You go all the way through tool-making, taking apart and refurbishing equipment and all of that so I was able to learn from him. Then once you get into that, it’s like this whole world opens up. They put you in touch with this old generation of printmakers that are retiring and getting rid of their equipment; so now all of this knowledge and equipment is becoming available. Multiple times a month I hear, “Oh do you want another press?” And I’m like “No! I don’t need anymore 2,000 pound machines!” But he trained me how to do it and it excited me too that there was a business opportunity behind it as well. There is a utility to it and you can monetize and make a living off of it, which is always something that has excited me—and really riding that line and not feeling like it’s tainting the art that I’m making. It’s a beautiful thing that people will compensate me for making this art. 

WBB: I remember when you were first telling me that story (I guess it was probably about 3 years ago when we first met), I had just come from doing an apprenticeship in New York and thinking about how those things are kind of rare now. You really can tell when somebody has gone through and given their expertise to someone younger, and then you can really tell in that younger person’s work. 

SS: Oh yeah.

WBB: What is it like to switch from 2 to 3-dimensionality and how do the paper and the clay intersect with one another?

SS: That’s a great question. They are pretty separate in my mind. I think the carry over is my design aesthetic. That’s something that I want to lend to everything that I’m letting leave this studio. Other than that, I keep them very separate. I do come at both of them with an attitude of: pull it down, take away the frill, what can be removed? Real purist, minimalist, like how can you convey what you’re trying to convey with as little as possible? Keeping it super simple so that it stands the test of time. I’m not interested in design trends. I want these things to be heirlooms—treasured, and used, and enjoyed. That’s something that is really important to me with both. Process-wise, with ceramics there is a lot of technicality involved for you to get a successful piece in the end. Especially if you’re selling your work—you want as many pieces to be successful as possible and your editions to be coming out of the kiln well. Attention to detail and running a tight ship with that is going to give you success. You can’t get away with not doing that on a hundred year old press that your hand is going in and out of. 

WBB: Right and the quality of the paper—you can’t be wasting all of that paper. 

SS: Right. You have to have fine attention to detail and make sure everything is tuned and calibrated right, everything is oiled right, everything is clean. It has to be set up well and run smoothly for the end result to work. That attention to detail is important with both for success, which I love. It’s the nerd in me. 

WBB: So actually you say you keep them separate, but they exist right next to each other in the same space.

SS: They do! Which people are always shocked by [laughs].

WBB: You are the connection between them obviously, because they are both your work, but it seems like the two might play a role with each other more than you even realize. 

SS: They hit me in the same way. They also tire me out in the same way. I’ll burn out on one and be so glad I have a huge ceramic job after working on some enormous edition of prints for two straight weeks on the press. Even my body—just having a different process to be working on, I’m like Oh good different muscles—I need break! The oscillating is good.

WBB: I switch between mediums too. I just started painting again in the last year and it’s very hard to figure that out for myself—how to balance the time. I feel like I am always trying to think what would Sarah do? Because you switch between mediums all the time.

SS: Yeah!

WBB: Did you get a lot of paper product work over the last year? 

SS: No.

WBB: Yeah because nobody is doing invitations! Are invitations your main thing? Or do you ever print books and stuff like that too?

SS: I do some speciality projects just as a case by case basis. Books are so beautiful but at the end of the day it’s like, that’s $3,000 in press plates and this many of my hours. It almost gets cost prohibitive to do such special, fine things like that. Once in a while we can pull it off if there’s a grant or something, but my bread and butter is marketing materials for people like: correspondence, business cards, beautiful branded packaging or just really fine products that people use to try to elevate with next level, tactile, special paper accoutrement that’s going with their package. Or if they have a service that is such a good way to communicate value just right off the bat. Events were probably about half of what I did. I love collaborating with people like painters or designers who just come to me with a plan, and I get to almost just execute or be the technician and be like, “Here is your beautiful product. It is done in an excellent way. Hope it serves the purpose you intended.”

WBB: You do graphic design too.

SS: Yeah. 

WBB: Because you designed my wedding invitations and our logo and everything. You have this almost hidden talent, too, of doing this minimalist [graphic] design. I love that. 

SS: The process informs a lot of the design. I think knowing the process really well allows me to coach, and be like this is a design that’s going to be so elevated and gorgeous in print. Knowing both sides can help with that. 

WBB: What do form, color, light and shadow mean in your work?

SS: Oh it means a lot in both. Letterpress is interesting. The history of letterpress is that this wasn’t a specialty print process—it was how things were printed. It wasn’t like, ooo did you get your thing letterpressed? It wasn’t elevated; it was just the standard. Because of that, fine printing didn’t bite down into the paper at all. So when you learn from men or women who worked in newspaper publishing houses way back when, who are now in their 80’s or 90’s, they look at a piece of letterpress that’s bit down into the paper like everybody loves (and I love! I think it’s stunning), and they’re like “What sloppy printing! You got your pressures all wrong.” They love what’s called a kiss impression. They want it perfectly flat—no bite down into the paper at all. Perfect ink but no bite. It’s so interesting that now you have all this depth to play with, which I love. You think about letterpress just with typography, but there is so much you can do with blocks in the press—creating depth, creating pattern, not inking at all—embossing down into the paper. To me there is a sculptural element to letterpress that you have to think about—even when it comes down to, what ink color am I going to use? How is the light going to hit it from the side? You consider all of that. I love that part of it. You are taking this substantial paper and creating something completely different with all of these processes.

With ceramics, oh man it’s so important to me, the details of finish on a glaze. I am very deliberate about if something is glossy—it’s because I want it high gloss and there’s a reason—I want it to catch the light that way. So much of my work is either raw on the outside or matte, which is something that soothes my eye and it lays across pattern so well. I love the juxtaposition of both—I love a high gloss piece with a pattern and then a super minimalist matte piece as well. I love how those look together. When it comes to the form sculpturally, I’m always considering how I can change the form of an object with utility and not impact it’s usability; but let it be something that when you see it, you’re excited by it every time you see it. 

WBB: Yeah and the color too—explain that a little bit. It’s very minimal, but I know there’s a reason behind your use of color.

SS: With ceramics I feel like glaze is one of the main ways you differentiate yourself. If you can take the time to learn how to mix your own glazes, it’s great because then you have custom glazes, and people know your work by your glaze. Your forms are important but I am a minimalist when it comes to my ceramics, so there’s nothing new under the sun. I can only make a mug look so different than a mug. Somebody else is going to create a cylinder with a handle. It’s tough in minimalism with an object like that to differentiate just by the form. I try to do it, but the added layer is the color tone. I love the chemistry. It takes me months to develop a new glaze. Right now I’m working on a green. I don’t have a green but I’ve been searching for this perfect tone and I identified it. Now I’m trying to get my glaze dialed in to just that perfect thing. It can take months with test firings and tweaks to your recipe to get it just right. All still under the umbrella of the piece needs to be used and washed and safe to drink and eat out of. There are a lot of layers to hit, but with glaze for me it’s kind of like this journey you have to take on, strap in, and you’ll get it maybe in a few months. [The glaze] is a signature for you that you can use. It completely changes with the finish in the color. I’m thinking about if I get this green nailed down, I’m so excited to see it on different forms in my mind that will look so different and be a completely new layer than all the things that people are associating me with. 

WBB: That’s so exciting. I’m already seeing it too and mixing it with the blues. Why did you choose blue as the first color?

SS: I actually started with gloss white. Everything was very minimalist gloss white. I think that was just [my] young design mind. I was thinking, oh I’ll just keep it as stark as possible. And then the blue—I think it was just my gut. It was a blue I always loved. It’s so striking. There is something about the velvet matte texture of the outside—I just love it every time I see it. I dialed it in to just the right thing. It’s also the color that I’ve branded my whole business with. That’s just something that when I see it, it hits me—it’s one of my favorite things to look at. I was like, this can translate into so many pieces. 

WBB: What is the meaning of mixing the natural and the artificial? 

SS: There is definitely juxtaposition. Tons of my work is just raw terra cotta with a glazed interior so it can be used. Those two couldn’t be more different looking. These extremely saturated and modern stark colors with this clay body, where there are pieces thousands and thousands of years old that are made out of a similar type of clay with a similar look—there is such a long legacy of that. I think all of that should be part of the repertoire. If you can take the challenge of tying it up under one aesthetic to where its cohesive, that’s what’s exciting to me—those types of design challenges. Like does this fit with everything? Because that’s important. I want everything to go together. It’s one of my favorite compliments when people see a piece and they’re like, “Oh I knew you made it before I turned it over and saw your name on the bottom.” 

WBB: And that’s the first thing they teach you when you’re in art school—if you want to be a successful artist, you need to have a concentration, you need to have a series, your work needs to all fall into this place where someone can recognize it. So you’ve definitely succeeded at that. 

SS: Thanks!

WBB: You’re talking about the natural references but what about the artificial references too? There’s something about the melding of the two where I can see that it is your work—because of the blending of the two.

SS: Architecture is a huge influence in my work. It’s very challenging, but I find it thrilling when it works—that you can take a lump of squishy clay and make it look so refined depending on what processes you use. That’s where I go back to the technical brain of what techniques can I learn that can completely meld this very organic material into something that looks so refined. You see tons of hard lines, tons of symmetry—I want everything to be just so. That’s the architecture mind. That’s what I pour over if I am interested in a new series or new pieces—I’m looking at contemporary architecture. The lines people are choosing to use, the proportions—all of that is just filtering in. Then I do tons of sketching. Then I whittle it down to what can actually be achieved in clay, because there are limits. But I love pushing those limits to where you look at a piece and think: Oh my God that’s intricate. I haven’t seen that done in clay before. The lines are fine and clean. All of that excites me a lot—to be able to take this organic thing and just hone it in so much like that. 

WBB: How do your concepts drive your process and how do they play out in your process? You said that you get the inspiration from the natural world and from architecture but there’s probably something within you that’s conceptually coming out in the work too—what is that?

SS: The process drives so much of it. The longer I’ve understood certain processes, that changes my work too as I refine my skill. I still think there’s this big craft vs. art battle, but your craftsmanship impacts your work so much. It completely can change the look of your work as you become masterful of your understanding of that material. Even now, I understand clay so much better than I did 10 years ago, or 15 years ago. The acquisition of different equipment and tools can help so much because you’re working on a new slab roller or whatever and you’re like, Oh my God! This is going to allow me to achieve that thing I didn’t understand how I could do before. I’m always kind of hunting and looking at other artists seeing, Oh that’s so interesting—they used this strange tool that maybe isn’t even for clay. I use letterpress stuff in my clay work—certain tools or a letterpress plate to stamp the bottom of every piece. There’s just a curiosity of how could this help me achieve something with this malleable material and differentiate yourself to make something you haven’t seen before in this medium. 

WBB: You’re very disciplined. I think that’s the one thing I’ve heard from everybody—that’s what gets you to the next level. That’s what gets you to creating the work that you’re proud to show and getting more and more work out there. It’s impossible to do without stretching your boundaries. 

SS: If you have a fear of failure, which I definitely do (I don’t like when things don’t go right the first time), it’s something that is my life’s challenge. It’s a huge waste of time and material, especially with stuff like this. Who knows how long you’ve been honing it in and getting it right and then it blows up in the kiln. It’s so frustrating, but it’s the most gratifying process if you push yourself through that. And don’t get too comfortable. There’s a very commercial side of my business. I sell a lot of units of ceramic goods that are fairly accessible in price compared to other fine arts, but I think you can’t get too comfortable and settled in. You have to push through those loops of I’m going to try again for the fourth and fifth and sixth time to get that thing right. 

WBB: How do you balance the necessity to create work as an individual artist and the needs of your business too? Your business is huge. It’s taken over. When I’m like, “I’m going to do an In The Studio with Sarah Sauer.” People will be like, “Who is that?” And I say, “Guten Co.” and they are like, “Oh!” It’s almost like the business precedes you in a certain way.

SS: It doesn’t bother me. The business has afforded me so much freedom and fulfillment. I have a beautiful relationship with the business. I feel so lucky that it works. It does feel like every day I sit down at this imaginary machine and think: Ok these are all the things I need to do. But I can take stock of how everything is going. There are so many opportunities for me to drive what is happening here and that feels so exciting that I’ve gotten to a place where there’s an audience and there are people that love it. I guess to answer your question, I am finally coming into a bit more freedom. You’ve probably noticed my work is getting bigger. I want to go big. I don’t want to become somebody who is just making widgets in my studio. There have been points in the history of me doing this, like a Christmas will kick my ass and I’ll be like, How many hundreds of mugs did I make? That is a beautiful thing. I am so lucky to have that demand, but I am so excited to be able to take that audience and ask, “Do you also like… these things?” [Laughs] These things that are more sculptural or maybe I can take more time. I love getting to sit down to a day where my production schedule is about making 5 huge pieces and not 80 little pieces. That has felt so good. That balance is kind of reaching more of an equilibrium. I have to stay on myself with boundaries too. The orders are going to roll in for the pieces. I partner with a lot of fine home shops that will sell my work for me, which I love. I just get to make it and ship it to them, and they take care of getting it to the people who want it. But the demand for that is kind of never ending, so you have to be choosey about saying, “Ok there is no more of that piece.” Or “I’m only going to do this much per month.” To create the space for more of the artistry that I’m interested in. I feel like I’m coming back to that. It’s been several years frankly of just being a production ceramic artist, which I’m proud of too, but it’s exciting to have that freedom feel like it’s creeping in now.

WBB: You struck the dream because you were able to give yourself financial freedom through the craft. A lot of times that bogs people down to not loving what they do anymore. This just shows the character of your discipline again—to be able to set the boundaries with yourself. It’s not as if the business has someone else running it. It’s still all you. Yet you’re able to say, “Ok I’m going to get to this point, because I know then that I’m going to be able to feed my artistic endeavors with the money that I’ve made selling the smaller products and getting those out there to people.” Which are also your art and your brand.

SS: Yeah, and I do believe it. I do love how democratized that is that people can access it if they want. Anybody can have a little piece if they want.

WBB: Absolutely. Do you think you would ever put your name on some pieces—even divide it out and not having it be a part of Guten Co. or is everything going to fall under that?

SS: I don’t know. I think about that a lot. I’m super private and I love having a brand and not sharing about myself. To me it’s like, you don’t need to know about me. It’s a completely different part of me when I am creating fine artwork that I would put my name on. When it comes to that—I’m so interested in making that work, but I don’t think I’m interested in necessarily monetizing that work.

WBB: That’s good. That means it’s truly coming from within you I think.

SS: I think it’s awesome if people can make beautiful fine art and sell it. I think that’s amazing.

WBB: But caring about selling it. You’re not making it for the money and that’s when I think people are making the most authentic work. And you probably weren’t [initially] making your Guten Co. work for the money either it didn’t seem like, it’s just that now people are demanding it with a purchase order.

SS: There was need. I had to support myself.

WBB: But do you think the actual way that you made the forms and the concepts when you were first doing it was because you thought Oh I think this is going to sell better than this?

SS: It was probably the opposite. I say this all the time. I will send a picture of a new thing that I finally figured out of a new form. I’ll send it to my partner or my sister or something and be like, “Hope people like this weird thing.” So I guess it is kind of opposite. I do let that take precedent and then it is cool that people want it in the end. 

WBB: I admire that you’re private in a time when it seems like no one is private at all and we are kind of up in each other’s worlds. I think it’s cool to learn that you’ve made the brand almost to hide your identity but that’s sort of what I’m wanting to expose. I am infiltrating your studio space. 

SS: I know [laughs]. I don’t do this often. Can you tell? 

WBB: No I can’t tell actually [laughs]. I think it’s really exciting to hear that you’ve gotten to this place at this point in your career where you have the freedom now to make this other stuff. It will be really interesting to see because I think a lot of really good artists are private and they don’t want to monetize off of a work that has their own name on it, which is why people get so stressed about having a show. Maybe that will be something that comes to fruition over the next two decades of your life or something.

SS: Yeah well and the shows that I’ve had—it’s been years because [Guten Co.] has become overarching and all encompassing so there hasn’t been time. But I do really want to create space and time. There is a long history of beautiful fine art printmaking and I’ve done some shows with the printmaking side of my work that I’m really proud of still and enjoy. Again, it wasn’t to be sold. To me it feels like the same way that a lawyer or a doctor has continuing education—I think that artists almost have a responsibility to go through that process and to create an edition, put yourself out there, let people look at it, hear what they say, take it or leave it, incorporate that into your work. It’s almost like an accountability to being a professional artist. You need to go through that. I love the formality of creating an edition of work that’s in a beautiful formal space like a gallery and people are seeing it in that setting with that mindset. It’s very different than seeing a ceramic piece in a store. There’s a place for that too, but I’m especially excited at some point to do a fine art ceramics show. Of course I’m riding the coattails of the long long history of beautiful ceramic pieces in museums in world class cities, but really reimagining what that could be and not be. How can you really take this material that’s typically used for such utilitarian products and refine it again? I’m excited about that in the future for sure. 

WBB: I’m excited about it too. 

SS: And for my development as an artist. There are always different levels for your planning and design and how you take that into 3-D objects, but it’s kind of like boot camp for your artist brain. I always crave that feeling of having that huge challenge, almost like you do in art school, and completing the loop. I have felt for a while that I need to do that on a regular basis.

WBB: What are some things about you that you think might come out in your bigger pieces? Where you’re from, your family and your heritage? I know you’ve talked about the name Guten Co. and growing up in Fredericksburg and the German influence. Tell me a little bit about all of that.

SS: I was born and raised in Fredericksburg. I am 6th generation and have a long history there. I am learning how special that is as I get older. A long legacy—my family is still there. I am of German lineage. I grew up with German being spoken in the home—that was my dad’s first language. It is an interesting part of my past. It’s not something that I constantly feel like I am reaching for. It’s a beautiful kind of line item in my development. There is a rich design history from Germany that of course I respond to so much. I’m not from Germany but I am interested in it the same way I am interested in the design histories of other countries too. But I think claiming that as part of the education that I submitted myself to informs my work—that’s something I do feel connected to. That’s something I’ve spent a lot of time pouring over and filling my mind with. 

WBB: It’s cool because the German in Texas thing is a different vibe. My best friend is from Fredericksburg and I think about how it has become this place for all of these people moving in from out of state that’s like—“the new Napa.” I think it’s interesting for people to know because everybody knows your brand around the whole country—that this is a true representation from this area. I think it’s really cool. 

SS: Yeah and to paint the picture too for people who never really knew that area of Texas—the Hill Country really was so quiet and serene. I grew up rural—not even in Fredericksburg—I grew up on a farm. It was so simple. You drove through the town and so and so is sipping his coffee at the German bakery like he is every Thursday at whatever time. Quiet, quiet, quiet little town with agricultural people. Blue collar. Very simple lifestyle. There is a simplicity and definitely a huge part of my personality comes from that. Being raised by people where there were no frills—you work hard, you take care of yourself and the people that you love. You’re dependable. You save and you don’t waste. Those tropes are real. Wanting to just be efficient, do a good job, be a good person—those simple qualities of living were definitely in me. 

WBB: I think they are so important. I was just talking about that in reference to my grandmother who is turning 95 next week and I wrote in her card, “Thank you for teaching us humility and grace.” Just being humble and hard working is something that so many people lack. You can see that stuff in your work.

SS: The steadfastness is helpful. Some things I really believe in—there is hard work and there is luck, but there is also just staying in the game long enough.

WBB: Discipline.

SS: Yeah. I’ve had many points where I think if there was a slight paradigm shift I would have gotten an easier job. 

WBB: I still contend with that every single year. I feel like there is a point each year where I’m like, What am I doing? Why am I doing this? And then you push through.

SS: You push through. I’m beginning to see the fruits of the inertia to that, which starts at like, Oh there’s a wind at my back. I don’t have to grind out every single thing as hard as I did 5 years ago, 8 years ago. In small ways.

WBB: Tell me about some challenges and fears that you’ve faced. Why were you getting to those points where you wanted to just quit?

SS: Burn out. Not having boundaries with myself. I’m that classic person that will ride myself harder than anybody else. Wondering if what I’m doing is relevant. We’re in hopefully, maybe, the tale end of a pandemic and never have I been so aware of, Does my work mean something? Maybe I should go be a nurse or something. There is so much need in the world and I wonder if what I am doing is helpful to people, or important, or worth dedicating my life’s career over. There is something resounding in my gut that I always come back to with that. I do feel it’s important—the work that artists do. We need them as a mirror. We need to reflect. We need objects that people are going to connect with and say, “Oh I was in a pandemic and these are the objects that brought me joy in my home.” Or “These are the things I invested in.” Or “These bring me back to that time.” We need that as a reflection. 

WBB: And an energy that feeds the world too. It’s not only a mirror but it’s coming from places of the past, coming from places internally, coming from people’s experiences. If we don’t have people creating things, we are just robots. We need the energy being put back into the world that comes out through objects or maybe you are a digital artist and it comes through the visuals. If you don’t have that energy flowing through the world, I think everybody would be really sad and depressed. I feel the same way sometimes—like what is a job if you’re not helping feed, clothe, or educate someone? But in a sense I think artists do educate people. They help bring joy to people like you were saying. 

SS: The freedom that you create as a practicing artist. I do have a—I hate the word platform because it sounds like social media, but I do. I have people who are interested in what I have to offer. One little note with the privacy thing—it’s not like I’m a hideaway—I want to talk to people about my work. I’m not going to blast it out, but once in a while I love sitting down with a high school kid, or a college art student will write me an email and I’m like, “Come in. Let’s have coffee. I’ll answer any of your questions and just tell you what I know and see if it helps you.” I love that warmth and that cross-pollination. That kind of stuff can set people on a completely different track in their life. That, to me—resonates. That’s something I can offer that impacts people’s lives in a meaningful way. 

WBB: Definitely. I think that’s one of the reasons I started this project too—was to round up all of the artists that I like and put them in one place together—to just show that there are people who are young, old, new and successful, and that we all feel much more similar than we think we do. A lot of the artists have the same grievances, stories of success, how they view their work, what you need to do to get successful, having the discipline to do it. There’s always some sort of internal battle—whether it’s setting boundaries to not overwork yourself or pushing yourself to get into the studio every single day. I hope that younger people will see this too and be able to look up to you and all of these other artists who have created spaces of success for themselves. 

SS: It’s going to be the most beautiful almanac of artists.

WBB: Thank you!

WBB: What advice do you have for younger artists?

SS: If I audit the last 10 years of me being a working artist, I think one of the most impactful things was asking for time from people that I look up to. I know it’s awkward. It’s even more awkward now than it used to be. Figure out their email or their phone number. I had a little template that said, “Can I swing by with a coffee and take 30 minutes of your time.” Tell them it is going to be short and have a little chat. It typically wasn’t 30 minutes—sometimes I got hours out of these people. But you sit down with these people and it connects you to future collaborations, work opportunities, finding a workspace that works for you, inspiration about how to adapt your home if you don’t need a big workspace or you don’t want one or you can’t afford one yet. These paradigm shifting ideas, of course maybe you’re 18 or 25 or whatever, you need to expose yourself to how a lot of working artists are doing their work. It’s going to look very different depending on the artist. Expose yourself to that. Ask for a little bit of time—you’ll get more than you asked for guaranteed. The worst thing they can say is no or they don’t respond and you move onto the next. It’s so easy to just put those feelers out, and that’s honestly how some of the best opportunities have come to me. 

I think consistency, too is the other thing. Stay connected in a consistent way—whatever pace that looks like to you, whatever form that takes. That will help with that inertia feeling of people getting a grasp of what you do, and then you’ll become a source expert in their mind of what you do, and that brings so many opportunities too. I get emails a lot of just, “We have this idea or project or opportunity and we thought of you immediately.” And it’s good that they are clear on what I do and what I offer so they thought of me right away.

WBB: Very well said. Thanks. This was awesome.

SS: So fun!

Photography and Interview by Wendy Bowman Butler | @wendybowmanbutler
Connect with Sarah Sauer / Guten Co. on Instagram @gutenco and see more of her work on gutenco.com