Sara Farrell Okamura initially started a career in journalism, but soon moved to art, graduating from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts. She has been a working artist with over thirty-five years of studio practice and exhibitions. These include shows in Chicago, New York, Boston, Washington, D.C, Mexico, and Japan. She has been the recipient of grants from the Illinois Arts Council, MASS MoCA’s Assets for Artists, the North Adams Award, the A.R.T. Fund (sponsored by the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation), and the Martha Boschen Porter Award. She has exhibited work at the Print Center New York; Thompson Giroux Gallery and Joyce Goldstein Gallery, in Chatham, NY; and Gallery 51, in North Adams, MA.
In addition to exhibitions, Farrell Okamura was codirector of 1935 Gallery, in Chicago—curating over thirty-five exhibitions in three years, including exchanges with artists from San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas, Mexico—and was founding executive director of Northern Berkshire Creative Arts, a community-based hands-on arts center on the campus of MASS MoCA. Further, she was also the School and Teacher Program Manager at the Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA, and from 2000 to 2020 reviewed grants for the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Residency. Recently she has written art reviews for Greylock Glass, Hyperallergic, Boston Art Review, and Art Spiel.