Selected Works from The Grief Club

The Art Academy of Cincinnati is pleased to present Selected Works from The Grief Club, an exhibition of artworks by AAC alum and incoming Academic Dean Sarah Stolar (https://www.sarahstolar.com). 

About the Artist: Sarah Stolar (b. 1974, Chicago, IL; she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her practice spans painting, drawing, multimedia installation, film, video, and performance art. She is also a core member of La Pocha Nostra, the oldest cross-border performance art troupe in the world. Rooted in a 30-year investigation of the feminine psychological narrative, common threads in her work include loss of innocence, sexuality, power, death, spirituality, and identity. Sarah is the daughter of artist and educator Merlene Schain (1948–2022) and a descendant of 19th-century German painter Adolph von Menzel and Rookwood Pottery master potter John von Menzel of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. She grew up in her mother’s art studio and award-winning art school, Schain Studios, in Cincinnati, and holds a BFA in Painting from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and an MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute. A dedicated educator for over two decades, she currently serves as the Academic Dean and Executive Director of Academic Affairs at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

About the Exhibition: The Grief Club, Sarah Stolar’s current project, is an interdisciplinary body of work presented as a fictitious nightclub. In 2018, Sarah became the primary caregiver for her artist mother after she was diagnosed with advanced-stage Alzheimer’s disease. This experience initiated a new body of work that continues beyond her mother’s death, prompting Sarah to use dark humor and irony to explore the emotional complexities of grief. The Grief Club is informed by 17th-century Dutch vanitas paintings—with their references to pleasure and the certainty of death—and the Kübler-Ross model of the Five Stages of Grief, which she has personified as entertainers. These figures embody the Celtic tradition of keening women: paid mourners who wail lamentations, feast, dance, and perform provocative acts in a party-style funeral known as “the merry wake.” The work challenges traditional experiences of sadness and socially sanctioned methods of coping by interpreting the raw and real ways many humans find comfort. Selected Works from The Grief Club presents a series of paintings and other works from the project.