NAME: sarah beck
BIRTH PLACE:
BIOGRAPHY
Sarah Beck received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Ryerson University in 1998. Sarah worked as an electrician in Toronto’s film industry before leaving to focus on her art. She launched ODE (visit www.shopode.com) in August 2001 at the Third Avenue Gallery in Vancouver, which continues to travel to various galleries through North America. Sarah was invited to the Banff Arts Centre in spring 2003 to study model building and begin working with new materials. She won the Joseph F. Stauffer prize in 2004 awarded to ‘encourage young Canadians of outstanding promise or potential’ from the Canada Council for the Arts. That same year she moved back to Saskatoon to focus on her newest project, a conceptual work about sweatshops and youth titled MOTHER (visit www.charitymakeover.com). Before her return to Toronto Sarah spent a year as the artist in residence at a high school for troubled youth, working intensively to encourage them to raise their voices in the community. She uses her art practice to act as a social barometer and cultural activist. With a focus on complicity in the culture of consumption she has used the tools of lifestyle advertising to make her work more widely accessible. She is currently a Master’s student at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD).
