COOP Gallery Presents:
Gardening, Not Architecture
Artist in Residence

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"What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery." — Thomas Merton

Synopsis

Voyage is the latest multimedia project from Nashville-based music artist Sarah Saturday, nom de scène GARDENING, NOT ARCHITECTURE. It features a mix of live performance with innovative short films by director Dycee Wildman, and vibrant original songs by Sarah Saturday produced by Boom Forest and Jeremy Lister.

This live visual album explores the shifting relationship we have with our complex and layered identities – those parts of ourselves both positive and negative that are always trying to protect us, sometimes to our detriment. 

Artist Bio & Statement

Sarah Saturday is an interdisciplinary musician, producer, writer, and performance artist known by her stage name, Gardening, Not Architecture. She has released several albums, singles, remixes, videos, films, and multimedia performances since 2007, and played over 200 shows in the U.S. and Canada since 2009. She has scored music for film and TV, including scoring music for several films. Since relocating to Nashville in 2012, Sarah has made a name for herself in the Nashville performance art community with her deeply vulnerable, complex, visually stunning performances.

Sarah met film director Dycee Wildman through a post on a Nashville listserv in 2014, and the two have been making art together ever since. Combining their decades of experience in their respective fields -- Dycee in film and Sarah in music and performance art -- they have created some of their most groundbreaking work.

With this new work, they are exploring the shared human experience that is our inner dialogue, reckoning with those characters who live in our heads: the overly enthusiastic cheerleader who wants us to be happy but doesn't want to see certain truths, the brow-beating critic who wants to protect us from getting hurt by preventing us from changing, and the quiet but powerful higher self who is always present and waiting for us to find her. Presenting the work as a living performance adds an enigmatic intimacy and vulnerability to the film, the music, and the experience.

Scene/Song List

Introduction
Opening Scene - Living Room
Scene/Song 1 - "Come Out"
Scene/Song 2 - "Never Givin' Up"
Scene/Song 3 - "Lay Me Down"
Wake-Up Call: Wild Geese
Scene/Song 4 - "Be Here Now"
Scene/Song 5 - "Happy You're Happy"
Scene/Song 6 - "Like You"
Realization: The Guest House
Scene/Song 7 - "Already Know"
Closing Scene

Cast

Creative Team

Additional Credits

"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver 

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

~~~

"The Guest House" by Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

(Performance inspired by Helena Bonham Carter reads The Guest House by Rumi on YouTube)

Monthly/Yearly Donors

CURRENT:
Christopher Atkinson
Genevieve Bachinski
Cara Beasley
Jeremy Boyle
Cory Bryant
Jack Chambers
Nicholas Coleman
Andy Derryberry
Beth Drennan
Gerard Gonzales
Brianne Grebil
Joshua Charles Grey
Brant Heflin
Dexter Kamiya
Rob Kaszuba
Kris Keys
John Kitzmiller
Megan Lee
Anna Lister
Jeremy Lister
Crystal Morgan
Landon Olson
Kort Peters
Nick Peterson
Zachery Prater
Shelli Reading
Sandy Roney
Kim Rueger
Gail St. John
Michael Scruggs
Randy Staab
Ben Stauffer
Clay Steakley
Adam Tillinghast
Lisa Valeri
Seth Werkheiser
Mayumi Wilms
Chris Youmans
Danyalle Youngers

2022:
Kepi Alexander
Mikel Andrews
Bethany Brown
Tino Castro
David Demko
Sue Doyle
Steve Glover
Kat Griffin
Janelle Hillman
John Reisinger
Kristy Robinson
Rick Savage
Andrew Turkenkopf
Seth Werkheiser
Brandon Wilhoite

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

"Remember: No man is a failure who has friends!" — Clarence Odbody

So many people made Voyage possible. It is beyond humbling. Thank you to my amazing creative team, to everyone who contributed to a fundraiser or made donations, and to everyone who has taken a chance on G,NA over the years.

Special thanks Coop Gallery for this amazing opportunity; to Ben Stauffer for steering me through the pandemic and encouraging me to release new music; to Daniel Jones for championing G,NA since 2019 and supporting independent artists like me in Nashville; to Oz Arts and Kindling Arts Festival for introducing so many new audiences to G,NA; to my brother, John Paul, for entering this new territory with me and absolutely crushing it; to my husband, Jeremy Lister, for lending his genius and pulling me back from the brink so many times throughout this process; and last but never least to my creative soulmate, Dycee Wildman, for always daring to get weird with me. 

An extra shout-out to my spiritual teachers Raggy Saturday, Wendall Cooper, and Thích Nhất Hạnh. No birth, no death!

xoxo Sarah

Please consider making a one-time or ongoing donation to support Voyage and help me get it out to the world: www.gardeningnotarchitecture.com/support