Sage Dawson’s work is about the politics of housing and labor that shape the American city. She has explored local history through the built environment, and recently her work has shifted toward understanding domestic labor in the Midwest during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By connecting textiles with labor history and urban studies, Dawson brings stories out of archival storage and into public conversation. She is drawn to analog approaches to technology and explores making that typifies historic domestic labor: banner-making, needlepoint, open-work, patterning, and stitching. In her prints, digital tools blend with traditional media to embrace a distinct, handmade mark. 

Sage Dawson is an artist and curator, and she teaches at the Sam Fox School at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the Founder and Co-Director at STNDRD (Granite City, Illinois) and NON STNDRD (Sauget, Illinois). Her work has appeared in Art in America, Elephant Magazine, From Here to There published by Princeton Architectural Press, New Art Examiner, Art in Print, Dwell Magazine, and Hyperallergic.

Soft Architecture is on view at the James K. Schmidt Gallery, Voney Art Center, through November 7. The gallery is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturdays, 12 to 5 p.m. Admission is free and open to the public.