Sara Black

Sara Black is an Associate Professor of Sculpture and Graduate Coordinator at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), actively engaged in ecological and social practice art through collaborative projects that interrogate human-nonhuman entanglements and material transformation.

Education:

• MFA, University of Chicago, 2006
• BA in Ecology/Art, Evergreen State College, 2003
• BFA, University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, 2001

Her research critically examines individualism through time-based processes using diseased wood, ecosystem-specific plants, and inherited materials to envision survivable futures. Projects like Resistance Architecture and Field Station 4 demonstrate her focus on political ecology, nonhuman perspectives, and collaborative making within collectives such as Deep Time Chicago and Project Fielding, emphasizing soil biodiversity, animal subjectivity, and design inclusivity.

Scientific Awards:

• Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry Fellowship
• Neubauer Collegium Fellowship

As Graduate Coordinator, Black mentors MFA students through courses like Grad Projects:Sculpture and Design for Nonhuman Kinds, where students collaborate with sanctuaries including The Elephant Sanctuary to create animal enrichment prototypes. Her fellowship-supported work bridges art, ecology, and social justice without explicit grant details in the source.

Black co-founded Project Fielding—a woodworking collective for femme and nonbinary woodworkers—and contributes to Deep Time Chicago's Mississippi River initiatives and the Anthropocene Commons, facilitating interdisciplinary exchanges that address climate collapse through vermiculture, myco-remediation, and speculative design.