The Grief Club is an interdisciplinary body of work presented as a fictitious nightclub. This new work-in-progress by Sarah Stolar includes large-scale drawings and paintings, block prints, neon sculpture, animatronics, video, photography, performance, and edible art. The motivation to create this work is a result of Sarah’s desire to use dark humor and irony to explore the emotions of grief. It is informed by 17th-century Dutch vanitas paintings, with their references to pleasure and the certainty of death, and the Kübler Ross model of the Five Stages of Grief, which she has personified as entertainers. They embody the Celtic tradition of keening women — paid mourners who wail lamentations, feast, dance, and perform provocative acts in a party-style funeral called "the merry wake."

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In 2018, Sarah became the primary caregiver for her artist mother when she was diagnosed with advanced-stage Alzheimer’s disease. This initiated this new body of work, which continues beyond her death. While this work is autobiographical, it is also about our collective trauma. As a result of our current sociopolitical climate, COVID-19, isolation, and the great loss of lives, we are all living in an age of loneliness and grief. This project is a body of work, but it is also a uniting idea. The Grief Club establishes a type of membership that anyone can theoretically join, thus creating a place for human connection and healing without masking the reality of grief. The work challenges our traditional experience of sadness (reserved, conservative, somber) and the appropriate methods of coping (therapy, medication, positive thinking), by interpreting the raw and real ways many humans find comfort (escapism, partying, sexual promiscuity, drug use). The Grief Club tells a story of the women who inhabit this imaginary place and the feelings evoked by death and loss.