Photo by Danielle Shields
Photo by Danielle Shields
Photo by Danielle Shields
Photo by Danielle Shields
Photo by Danielle Shields
BOOKING: CONTACT @ SARAHSATURDAY . COM
“Easily one of Nashville's best and most criminally underrated projects.” — No Country For New Nashville
“A memorable and emotional journey that is both visually stunning and deeply moving.” — Kindling Arts
“Saturday’s entire imaginative enterprise revels in liminalities and ambiguities.” — Nashville Scene
Sarah Saturday, known by her stage name Gardening, Not Architecture, is an interdisciplinary musician, producer, writer, and performance artist. A Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship (FY2024) recipient, Sarah is celebrated in Nashville for her complex, vulnerable, and visually stunning performances. Since 2007, she has released numerous albums, singles, remixes, videos, and multimedia performances, and has played over 200 shows in the U.S. and Canada. Her music has been featured in films, TV shows, and commercials, including scoring the Discovery Channel documentary Dark Side of the Sun and the film Superpowerless. After relocating to Nashville from Los Angeles in 2012, Sarah began incorporating film, dance, and spoken word into her multimedia performances. Her latest release, Voyage, is a 40-minute “live visual album” that premiered to sold-out audiences in Nashville (2023) and Los Angeles (2024).
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The Full Story of G,NA:
Sarah Saturday’s long-running solo project, known to most as Gardening, Not Architecture (G,NA), began as a series of experimental demos recorded on cassette tape, deep in the coldest winter months of 2003 in Wisconsin, where she grew up. After the demise of her punk band in 2005, Sarah began reworking the demos. She released a four-song EP in 2007 under the project name Gardening, Not Architecture. The songs began to circulate online, and soon there was pressure from fans for Sarah to perform live. In 2008, she played the first two G,NA shows in Los Angeles. In 2009, she booked her first solo tour, performing with a bass guitar, backing tracks, and a homemade LED light wall. In the early summer of 2009, she recorded her first full-length album, First LP. By the end of that year, she was touring full-time. Between 2009 and 2012, Sarah played over 200 shows as G,NA, touring the United States and Canada multiple times including two months on the 2010 Warped Tour. In 2011, she released her second album, Saboteur, with the help of a successful Kickstarter campaign. After relocating to Nashville in 2012, Sarah began shifting her focus from touring to building relationships within Nashville’s budding and diverse arts community, as well as venturing into the world of film. In 2015, Sarah released her first visual album, Fossils, a feature film made in collaboration with filmmakers Dycee Wildman, Motke Dapp, Jonathan Rogers, and Jennifer Bonior. In 2016, she composed her first film score for the indie feature film Superpowerless, and finished the two-year album cycle for Fossils with two special live film scoring performances in Nashville as part of the Modular Art Pods group show at Queen Ave Art Collective. In 2017, she focused on scoring music for film and TV, contributing music to shows on the Discovery and History channels. In 2019, Sarah debuted a new solo multimedia performance piece, Absence of Me, that combined films by Dycee Wildman, synchronized lights, and several remixes of past G,NA songs, as well as her new single, Absence of Me. 2019 also brought more placements of G,NA songs in film & TV, as well as a performance in the 2019 Kindling Arts Festival. In 2020, after traveling to Atlanta for her first Sofar Sounds performance, Sarah hosted a month-long residency in partnership with Mindful Nashville. During quarantine that year, she composed the score for a new short film by her long-time collaborator and friend Dycee Wildman, and was invited to perform as part of a streaming group show event at Oz Arts Nashville at the end of that year. In 2021, Sarah began recording her fourth studio album, which was produced by her brother, John Paul Roney of Boom Forest, and her husband, Jeremy Lister. Her only live show in 2021 was a reimagined version of her Absence of Me performance piece for the 2021 Kindling Arts Festival. Sarah kicked off 2022 with a two-night performance of Absence of Me in the Portals group show at Oz Arts Nashville, before beginning production on her new full-scale theatrical performance piece, Voyage, built around nine short films directed by Dycee Wildman and a stage play co-written by Sarah and Dycee. Sarah was invited as one of four artists to share work-in-progress excerpts from Voyage in the Brave New Works Lab, a three-night group show at Oz Arts Nashville in May of 2022. The performance and new music received rave reviews, and Sarah began releasing singles from the forthcoming album in late 2022. In January, 2023, Sarah was invited to be the artist-in-residence for the month at Coop Gallery in Nashville. In addition to showing behind-the-scenes photos, props, and costumes from the making of Voyage, Sarah created several pieces of original mixed-media artwork using images and lyrics from the show, and performed the nearly-finished full Voyage performance piece eleven times for private audiences. In June of 2023, Sarah was awarded the Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship for fiscal year 2024. On August 3, 2023, Sarah premiered Voyage at the Darkhorse Theatre in Nashville, TN, with a three-night run. The accompanying Voyage soundtrack album was released on all streaming platforms on August 3, 2023.