Meet Sunset artist Sarah McCarthy Grimm.

One thing I found out recently: Sarah is obsessed with the moon. She jokes that she’s a lunatic, because the word comes from the Latin “lunaticus” meaning “moonstruck.” And she has the tattoos to prove it, too. Her latest series is called BASALTIC, which is an homage to the so-called Lunar Seas, basaltic craters that 17th century astronomers thought were actual oceans. These romantic paintings have Sarah’s signature serene abstract style and, a true Sunset artist, she’s connected the moon and ocean by incorporating sand and saltwater into her acrylic paint.

Sarah’s first solo show in Los Angeles, Mare Lunatica, will open on September 22nd at NeueHouse Venice Beach. You can RSVP here for the opening reception.

Tell us about your practice.

My company, Sarah Grimm Studio, is my platform to offer paintings, social practice and performance, and consulting work. My art practice is interdisciplinary.

My current series of paintings is called Basaltic. I've been working on it for about six months. Concurrently I have another series called Remnants. I'm always working on new paintings. I also offer commissions so people can hire me to do a custom piece for their space.

To activate both my abstract paintings and other conversations, I love to facilitate workshops. I taught yoga in the past, and I've always been interested in weaving together my yoga meditation practice, the facilitation skills I built through graduate school and what's called social practice and performance art.

How long have you been an artist?

My grandmother taught me to draw at the age of 6 and I’ve basically never stopped. But I’ve maintained an intentional studio practice for over 10 years now, since graduating from Brown with a degree in Visual Art. And now it's been just over a year of trying to be a full-time artist, centering art in my life.

One of the many unpaid things you do as an artist is go to a bunch of openings and just try to meet people and talk to people and understand the art world and see the new art that's being shown and appreciate other artist’s work. Though I can get drained by socializing, it's been extremely rewarding for the most part, to get to know other artists and even the gallerists and curators as well.

Where are you currently showing your work?

On the Westside, I’m showing at Sealevel Studio as part of the Summer in The Sunset exhibition. It’s work that is inspired by the summer months out here, which are pretty foggy and intense. It’s a fantastic local art and community space run by a neighbor and friend. I’m also a member of the cooperative City Art Gallery in the Mission, though I don’t have work up there right now. Then, there’s the show in LA opening next week.

How does being in The Sunset influence your work?

My first solo show was August 2022 here, like a block away from my house, at the Great Highway Gallery. It's a wonderful community. Everyone that I've met that makes work out here is really open to connecting. We all have really different takes, but it feels like we're all pretty inspired by being here in the Sunset and especially by the ocean.

One person that comes to mind that I've gotten to know who typifies a Sunset artist is Jessica Dunn. She makes amazing oil paintings. She's been an artist in the Sunset for decades, and it's just been really cool to hear her stories and just her knowledge of everything.

In July, you presented, “Detained Imprints,” at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in partnership with Badri Valian, a participatory interactive installation artist and painter. Can you tell us more about this show?

Yes, my collaborator, Badri Valian, invited me to create a project together for the closing celebration of طراوت | TARAVAT, which featured the work of Taravat Talepasand about the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran and worldwide for human rights.

Our project was called Detained Imprints. Stepping back, imprints refers to my idea around how we imprint on each other and is part of my painting practice. I came up with the imprints concept in 2016, when I was managing a meditation center here in San Francisco. I write a meditation over and over again into paint that I then literally imprint into the canvas. Usually, it is a phrase that I've been repeating to myself, trying to imprint into my own psyche. For example, in a recent series, the meditation was “all you are is now.” When I press the words into the painting, it creates this really interesting visual effect. I also feel like it adds a subconscious or subtle power to the painting in a way.

We decided to try to transform a traumatic memory that Badri had from growing up in Iran when the morality police threatened to put her in a potato sack and put her in the trunk. Even though they let her go home instead of taking her that way, the memory stuck with her. We created these burlap artworks that we put ourselves in and then read poems for ten minutes each that we had written to try to forge more solidarity around #WomanLifeFreedom in the world.

At the end, we invited folks to come up and write on our burlap, on our bodies, names of people that they know or know of, who have been detained in some way, either spiritually or physically. This was the imprinting part of the participatory performance - asking them to write the names, imprinting their stories and memories into our burlap.

It’s a really exciting project that I hope we'll do more of. I can see us doing it in so many other venues, refining and iterating a bit each time. Through this work, I can bring more awareness to important issues. It feels very aligned with my values and my spirituality to create more solidarity across different cultures and struggles through art.

Tell me more about the Imprints work.

I have a framework I call Collective Imprints, merging my art, equity-centered facilitation, and spiritual practice. I will be doing a workshop at NeueHouse Venice Beach for their members in advance of my opening on September 22nd. We’re going to start with an opening somatic meditation, then we’ll reflect on an inquiry about how we can imprint on each other and the sea with more compassion, and then I’ll teach my monoprint technique so we can create a collaborative mural on fabric together, that we’ll then hang in the doorway to the gallery. Finally, we’ll close with another meditation and optional walk to the ocean’s edge.

Another thing I love about the imprints technique is the pieces of paper you end up with, that carry the remaining paint and the writing on them, which is often obscured. I make other pieces of art using these papers, called REMNANTS. There’s a wonderful chance to relinquish control over exactly how the paint appears on either side of the two-way imprinting.

Tell us about the Basaltic series that you’ve been working on.

You know those dark spots on the Moon? Jesuit astronomers used to think that they were oceans. So in the 1600s, they were looking in their telescope, and they gave them all these beautiful Latin names, like Mare Vaporum, which means Sea of Vapor.

I thought that was really dreamy. I also learned about them in a serendipitous way. When I was installing my solo show at Danielle SF, which I had called Lunar Oceans of Love because all of my paintings, at that moment, had a moon in them but felt oceanic. I didn't know anything about the lunar seas at the time. While I was installing, I ran into a friend Amy Schoening asked if I was referring to the actual Lunar Seas, which she had learned about years prior and kept a handwritten list of their names that she then texted to me. It just stuck.

I build up the surfaces of the BASALTIC paintings with gesso, sand and sea water. Then that creates a whole new dynamic with the imprinting technique. There's something sort of romantic about bringing together this myth that there are oceans on the moon through the actual materiality of the work. And then of course I love the Latin names I use for the paintings themselves.

Who is your ideal collector?

Some people really love abstract, some people really don't. In that way, my work isn't for everyone because I specifically chose to be an abstract artist for a few reasons. I've always practiced photography as well. And so that always felt like if I wanted to represent reality, it would be through photography.

Because I take such a process based, meditative approach, I really like to also create a meditative experience for the viewer. To me, abstract art does that better. There's also this element of moving beyond analytical thought in abstraction in process-based approaches to painting that I really appreciate.

I also like that there are multiple interpretations with abstract art and everyone finds their own version of the story.

Have you always lived by Ocean Beach?

I really loved San Francisco and the ocean drew me here. After three years in a great sublet in Cole Valley, I moved to a place on Moraga and 48th right next to the beach in April 2018. That’s where I really found a sense of community, and I even met my partner of 6 years through the neighborhood connections. I started walking barefoot on the beach everyday, and that eventually evolved into my jog-and-plunge ritual. Any contact with the beach feels like part of my art practice, in a way.

What is your perfect westside weekend?

Friday nights we often stay in, or I love to take a walk down to the beach to watch the sunset and then walk up to Thai Cottage on Judah.

Saturday, we love to just relax with friends and neighbors. If it's a nice day, we could either go to Golden Gate Park or the beach. I love being this close to the park, too - I really love the bison, it just seems so ridiculous in that particular SF way.

On Sundays, we go to the Sunset Farmer’s Market, then chill out, lunch and maybe some kind of barbecue with the neighbors. Another really great place is Palm City, dangerously only 2 blocks away from me.