Patricia Sannit is a sculptor and multimedia artist. She received her B.A. in art history, Norwegian, and fine art from the University of Minnesota and her M.F.A. with high distinction from California College of Art. She has worked on archeological sites in the Near East and Ethiopia and her art relates to her study of archeology, migration, community, and our place in nature.
Sannit has work in many public and private collections. Her awards include the Scult Contemporary Forum Artist Award, the Arizona Art Commission artist grant, Phoenix Art Commission artist grant, and an INFLUX grant. She has had residencies at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, Red Lodge Art Center, Centre Céramique La Borne, the Belger Crane Yard, Baer Art Center in Iceland, Tempe Center for the Arts, and Atelje A-M in Sweden, among others. Solo exhibits include those at the Phoenix Art Museum, Mulvane Museum in Kansas, and ASU Art Museum.
During the COVID lockdown, she focused on creating opportunities to make connections between artists and the community, working with a small group of artists to organize three outdoor, city-wide exhibitions, titled Roadside Attraction, providing opportunities for hundreds of artists to exhibit their work and engage the public in a safe manner.
Sannit spent her time at MacDowell working in the forest, developing a new body of work related to hybridity between humans and the non-human world, an envisioning of the post-Anthropocene. Explorations resulted in a tree womb - a human sized container woven from fallen branches, and additional work was developed though expressive movement and performance. In 2025, the new work will be exhibited at in situ, Phoenix, AZ. Also in 2025, Sannit’s work will be featured in “True and Real” at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, and she will be a fellow at the Woodman Foundation Residency in Florence, Italy.
