About
Sarah Stroud is a ceramicist based in Gqeberha, Eastern Cape. She is currently completing her honours in Visual Arts as a ceramics major at Nelson Mandela University. Her work explores familial dynamics, personal identity formation, and the biological underpinnings of human behaviour. Drawing inspiration from human anatomy, the forms within her work often echo the appearance of bones and tissues, which she sees as fundamental elements of both our physical structure and her own identity. Through complex and abstract forms, Sarah’s sculptures capture the continuous evolution of self as well as the various “parts” forming the “whole” of one’s identity.
A highlight of her career was being selected as a finalist for the 2024 Sasol New Signatures competition and being awarded Best Student Work at the Eastern Cape Regional Ceramic Exhibition in December of that same year.
Skills
Technical & Artistic:
Hand building, slab and coil construction, slip casting, glazing and surface decoration.
Creative & Conceptual:
Concept development, visual storytelling, exhibition planning, design for functional and decorative pieces, material experimentation.
Teaching & Facilitation:
Workshop and class design, participant guidance, public engagement.
Professional & Business:
Client liaison for commissions, artwork documentation, social media and portfolio presentation.
Services
Custom Commissions
Workshops & Classes
Functional Pottery
Event Experiences
Ceramic Process
Sarah works in various white clays. From Earthenware paper clay to White Stoneware and Porcelain.
In her 2024 body of work, Skeletal Understanding, Sarah hand built each sculpture using porcelain. She would coil the vessels starting from a circular base and the thereafter distort the shape as she built up. With each coil, she intuitively indented and pulled the clay into the shape she desired, texturing the pieces with various tools as she went on.
Photo by Jessica Craill
Recent Process
In her recent work, Complex Construction, Sarah uses less conventional ceramic techniques.
Sarah creates her own paper clay to work with by mixing paper pulp into clay slip. This mixture is then either used as is or dried out on a plaster bat to be used as a more solid clay.
Using her paper clay, she creates multiple of the same unit or shape in an organic form and then attaches each piece to each other, creating an “assemblage of multiplicity”. The individual pieces vary in shape across each sculpture. They range anywhere from rings to oddly shaped coils, discs and even cotton balls that have been dipped into the paper clay slip mixture.
Once she feels that she has built the structure up enough, she stops. Although, with these sculptures she is never really “finished” as the forms desire to be continued.
Exhibitions
GFI ART GALLERY
10 – 31 May 2025
“Vitrified” Ceramic Group Exhibition with Lookout Sibanda, Sinethemba Xola & Sarah Stroud
December 2024
Eastern Cape Regional Ceramic Exhibition 2024
NELSON MANDELA ART MUSEUM
November 2024
Who’s Who and What’s New? 2024 Exhibition
PRETORIA ART MUSEUM
September-November 2024
Sasol New Signatures 2024: Articulate
BIRD STREET GALLERY
October 2024
Nelson Mandela University GradEx exhibition
ART ON TARGET
August 2024
Same Size, Same Price, No Signature
July 2024
Ceramic Banquet Exhibition
NELSON MANDELA UNIVERSITY
November 2024
Fine Art Final Year Exhibition
November 2023
Fine Art 2nd year exhibition
June 2023
Fine Art 2nd year exhibition
Awards
Eastern Cape Regional Ceramic Exhibition
Awarded Best Student Work for “Paranasal Understanding” (December 2024)
Nelson Mandela University
Recipient of Student Merit Bursary (2022)
Recipient of Scholar Merit Bursary (2021)
Pearson High School
Visual Arts 1st Class Position (2019-2021)
Recipient of the Whitehead trophy for Art Practical in 2021