Sarah Bourne Rafferty (Sarah Atwater Bourne) earned a MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA and a BA in Studio Art with a concentration in Photography and Book Arts from Warren Wilson College near Asheville, North Carolina. She has continued her studies at Maine Media and Penumbra Foundation. She has been awarded Artist in Residence at four institutions over the last four years.

Sarah's work ranges from photographs to books to prints with a particular love for alternative process/non-silver photography. She is engaged in a line of inquiry that stretches beyond a particular medium to explore the internal world of thought and how it connects us, builds community and helps us understand ourselves in the context of the larger world. Sarah is mesmerized by the interweaving of thoughts into words. She is consistently inspired by both silence and the natural world. Parts of the natural world often appear intertwined with words or lines of text as she tries to dissect what is happening with the changing of the seasons and how they can relate to the human experience.

She is the founder of Atwater Designs, a cyanotype design studio that produces original cyanotypes, fine art prints and paper goods. Her more experimental and personal work is what appears here in her portfolio. She was a teacher of photography to high school students for most of her career until taking her studio practice full time. She still finds working with students to be integral in her process. Sarah's work has been shown and collected widely. She lives in southeastern PA with her husband, dog and cat.