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Sasha Petrenko is an educator, intermedia artist, environmental choreographer and founding member of the New Urban Naturalists. Her site specific installations and performances have been supported, commissioned and presented at North American institutions including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF), Robert Wilson's Watermill Center (NY), Southern Exposure (SF), the Lab (SF), the Temescal Arts Center (OAK), the University of San Francisco, the Headlands Center for the Arts (CA), and the Djerassi Foundation (CA). She teaches drawing, woodworking and new media at the University of San Francisco, the San Francisco Art Institute.
Artist Statement: In the last two passes around the sun the focus of my research has expanded and presently centers on the geology of our dynamic, living planet. In the infinitesimal time we've been in existence, we've managed to carve a very wide wake. I feel an urgency now, in this time of necessity, to tell the story of our home. Due to the afore mentioned sense of urgency, my current creative output is actualized in a broad range of media. I am making a visual atlas of all the animals I meet, a graphic novel of the geologic time scale, weaving baskets as a means to engage in an interspecies craft legacy, working on a choral piece about methane and developing a multi-media dance play about human nature relationships.
My practice may seemingly lean toward the utopian, but it's empowered by pivotal moments that range from the uncomfortable to the absurd. (I have familial reasons to be suspect of utopian societies that I could go into, but not here.) I find that it's in those unmediated moments that we discover new ideas, uncover hidden feelings and make deep connections. However fleeting, the transformative experience shows us we can change.
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