Greetings from Planet SJ
December 2024
Good morning.
A quick note before I ship another puzzle…
Hope you’re all surviving seasonal transitions!
Thank YOU for being so fabulous during an especially wild year.
My extended family, my friends, my creative soulmates, collaborators, customers, and community – may you all meet face to face one day!
People Who Make Planet SJ Possible
OPERATIONS
- Marc Bonne (utility-in-fielder)
- Erik Gould (photographer)
- Michael Ferrier and Joyce Bettencourt (Puzlkind and vegetables)
- Pat Zacks/Camera Werks and Seekonk Woodworking
- Rani (operations ++)
- My parents (they made me, right?)
Bio
Sarah Jane Lapp likes to connect humans to one another.
Over the last twenty-five years she has made images for stage, page, screen, and bean, producing essay-films, hand-drawn animations, short plays, jigsaw puzzles, music videos, telematic productions, anti-fascist greeting cards, and photovoltaic solar installations.
Two very funny Minnesotans spawned SJL and sent her to earn a B.A in Playwriting at Brown University before she moved even farther east as Fulbright Scholar at Filmova a Televizni Fakulta Academie Muzickych Umeni (FAMU) in Prague. She apprenticed at Studio Bratri v Triku and completed her MFA from the Department of Filmmaking at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After a brief stint in NYC typing for R.O. Blechman and Wall Street tycoons alike, Ms. Lapp spent the next eight years in Seattle, vending her drawings at Pike Place Market, contributing editorial cartoons to the Hearst daily, Seattle Post-Intelligencer (RIP!), and producing animations, primarily for social justice and arts-dedicated entities. These animations, including her collaborations “Chronicles of an Asthmatic Stripper” and “Chronicles of a Professional Eulogist” with contrabassist/composer Mark Dresser, earned SJ internationally peculiar museum and festival exhibitions, an almost-Genius Award, and numerous stalkers. Lured back East for teaching appointments at Wellesley and Harvard, Sarah Jane dropped anchor in Seekonk, MA with her partner, the musician Skyjelly. about a decade ago, and began designing jigsaw puzzles from her paintings. The puzzles brought her into worlds dedicated to healing and community-building -libraries, universities, hospitals, even a few corporations. She now uses these puzzles both inside the curated app Puzlkind Jigsaw Puzzles and during live puzzle assembly events, i.e. the large public art project, “Puzzical Chairs & Pie with Live Music.”Living among turkeys, deer, and other people’s dogs Sarah Jane uses comedy and compassion to generate free and off-grid renewable energy.
FELLOWSHIPS & GRANTS
195 District Park Grant (2022, 2023, 2024), Massachusetts Cultural Council (2024,2020, 2018, 2013),Santa Fe Art Institute (2011), Seattle City Artist’s Grant (2010), Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Media Grant (2007), the Alpert Award in the Arts/UCross Residency Award (2007), The Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center (2007 -in collaboration with Mark Dresser), Artist Trust Gap Grant (2004), the MacDowell Colony (2001, 2000) a Jerome Foundation New York Media Grant (2000), a Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art Grant (2000), Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Arts (2000), the Atlantic Center Center for the Arts/Civitella Ranieri (2000), an Artslink/CEC International Partners Media Grant (1997 with Jenny Perlin), and Fulbright Scholarship(1994)
Press
ACROSS THE POND
- Featured on Bettina Munk’s and Björn Hegardt’s Lines Fiction, June 2012
- Galerie Berthold Naumann announcement, May 8, 2009
- Stuttgarter Nachrichten, May 6, 2009
- Sarah Jane Lapp in Stuttgart, Stuttgarter Nachrichten, April 5, 2006 (PDF)
- Modern Art in Alten Rathaus, Filder wochenblatt, April 6, 2006 (PDF)
ACROSS THE COUNTRY
- SJL, as seen in Achitectural Digest
- BostonVoyager, Check out Sarah Jane Lapp’s Artwork
- Reporter Today, “MIW” To Join The Party On Art Night Bristol Warren August 29
- SouthCoast Today, Solved: Puzzle artist finds a place at Groundwork Gallery
- Artscope, Various Exhibitions at ArtProv Gallery
- Brown Daily Herald, Sarah Jane Lapp ’94 brings paint, puzzles to campus
- Artscope, Saluting Talent
- Boston Hassle, SKYJELLY – “The 6 Is Silent”
- San Diego Reader, Mark Dresser: Defining the Solo Contrabass at UCSD
- Jazz Messengers, Synastry
- Outside-Inside-Out, Christmas Gift Suggestions for that Avant Garde Lover in Your Life
- Robert Bush’s response to “Nourishments”
- Seattlest, October 20, 2009, I Wanna be a Professional Eulogist
- The New York Times, A Film Festival for a Jewish World That Spans the Globe, by A.O. Scott
- Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 15, 2007, The artist lineup for Tacoma Art Museum’s Northwest Biennial is irresistible
- The Enterprise, October 1, 2008, Lapp Exhibit at Anderson Center
- The Stranger, September 10, 2008, 2008 Stranger Genius Awards Shortlist: Film
Cross-examination
- “Paintings by Sarah Jane Lapp,” Paula Martiesian/BankRI, July-August 2016
- La Trobe University, Screening the Past, What Should I Make Up? An inquiry into autobiography. Interview with Sarah Jane Lapp.