about
Sarah Thomas is a photographer, interdisciplinary artist, and educator currently serving as Photography Technician and Adjunct Instructor in the School of Art at Bowling Green State University (BGSU). She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2013 from BGSU and her Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2020.
Thomas's professional experience spans photography, museum imaging, curatorial practice, arts education, and freelance creative work. Prior to completing her MFA, she worked as a freelance photographer and muralist while also gaining experience in the arts retail sector. She later worked in Image Reproduction at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where she developed expertise in photographic documentation and reproduction. While pursuing her MFA at Cranbrook Academy of Art, she also worked as a Curatorial Assistant, further expanding her experience across both studio practice and the institutional art world.
As an artist and curator, Thomas has exhibited and organized work throughout the Midwest. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions, including solo exhibitions at Upper Iowa University, Bread and Circus Gallery, Salem Financial, Just Jerry's Gallery, Just Toledo, and The Portal Gallery between 2022 and 2025. In 2023, she received Best of Show at the 2nd Annual Pride Exhibition at the Findlay Art League in Ohio. In 2026, she was awarded a Project Grant from the Toledo Arts Commission in support of her continued artistic practice. She also recently had work exhibited at the Riffe Gallery (Columbus, OH) and at Saint Francis University alongside Edward Burtynsky.
Thomas's interdisciplinary practice centers on environmental concerns, particularly the cultural, material, and ecological implications of plastic. Working across photography, sculpture, and alternative photographic processes, she investigates the tension between the seductive aesthetics of consumer materials and their long-term environmental consequences. Her work frequently incorporates found, discarded, and manufactured plastics while challenging conventional ideas of the photographic print. By moving between two- and three-dimensional forms, Thomas explores how photographic images can function simultaneously as objects, evidence, and material traces, creating a visual language that examines consumption, waste, and humanity's complicated relationship with the environment.
