Photo Journal

My name is Sarah Grana. I primarily enjoy painting, photography, and mixed media.

I am a collector of all things...buttons, shells, rocks, feathers, nails, dolls, bones, hair, vintage photos, sideshow items, masks, ...I believe objects hold power and radiate magick. I love ritual. I love to use my hands as eyes. Talismans play a large role in harnessing feminine energy be it chaotic or good in my work.

I particularly enjoy aspects of taxidermy. My mixed media work combines elements of nature, decay, found object, and painting.

I went on to Graduate from Columbia College, Chicago with a BFA in painting and a minor in Art History. My focus was on Body Art, Photography and Writing on topics related to Feminist Art and subversive performance.

I love to read, write, make art and spend time with my beautiful babies and my partner, Benjamin. I come from an amazing Italian/Irish family that supports me in everything I do.

I am an advocate for women and girls. I am a story-teller and a feminist. A former boxer. I honor the Goddess. I love the wilderness. My neighbors call me a witch, but the kind that animals and small children look up to when searching out magick places. A womb-witch.

I spent 10 years as a counselor for the American Academy of Art, started a family where I was a Stay-at-home Mama for our Irish twins, worked from home, sold my art and now am a creative assistant for Chicago Motherhood photographer, Maggie Cuprisin. I am also a Creative Assistant for Robin Ross of Blissful Births and Babies.

Becoming a Mother has given me the greatest happiness in life.
My children are so creative and strange little birds. I love them. I found that from the first weeks of my pregnancy well into post partum life, I really embraced my creativity. I felt like a well-spring of creation was flowing, quite literally in giving birth to my human babies but also giving birth to myself and this new version of me. No longer the demoness Lilith figure I embraced so vehemently in my 20s but a softer, gentler, more complete Maternal figure; loud, large and full of joy and milk. That very dichotomy was always at the center of my writing and my artwork. The abject blended with the holy. The grotesque merging with the beautiful.

My favorite place to be in the world is the city of New Orleans.

I love scalding hot baths with lavender, milk chocolate, preserving insects and birds, collecting hair, gardening in our underground grotto,free-bleeding,sucking the marrow from bones, nature walks, museum days,full moons, reading, writing, building, and kissing my lovers mouth hidden in his amazing giant beard.

I want to live forever.