Park City multimedia artist Sara Shepherd Edgar has paintings, ceramics and sculptural papier-mâché on display at Gallery MAR, 436 Main St. Her subjects range from circus elephants and rotten bananas to wiener dogs in party hats, all arranged into layered visual narratives that reward a closer look.

Edgar, who grew up near Seattle, started her career in metal. She earned a fine art degree in metal design from the University of Washington and made what she called "little narrative jewelry pieces." Her metalwork appeared in the 1997 book Jewelry: Fundamentals of Metalsmithing, and she showed at a gallery in Seattle.

Parenthood changed the equation. After having her daughter Ivy and son Reilly, Edgar set aside the torch and enamel kiln. The family moved to New Hampshire for two and a half years, where her sister-in-law, a painter, helped her pick up a brush. "I was intimidated by two-dimensional art and I never even took a painting class when I was in college," Edgar told The Park Record in January 2017, when she had a solo exhibit at Terzian Galleries on Main Street.

She never went back to metal.

Edgar moved to Park City in 2005 for her husband's job and began showing locally. She was represented by Terzian Galleries until 2020 and now shows at Gallery MAR.

Her paintings have been primarily acrylic, though she has recently added oil sticks and collage. One recent piece layered old to-do lists and grocery lists under acrylic and oil paint. "Some of the lists peek out, so it's voyeuristic in some sense," Edgar told TownLift in a profile published Monday, Sept. 7. "You can see a life underneath."

Recurring symbols anchor her work. Tally marks appear across paintings and ceramics. Bowling pins show up in her newest three-dimensional pieces at Gallery MAR. Edgar said she sees the pins as an analogy: they get knocked down and get back up again.

Her circus series, featuring elephants and giraffes, caught the attention of the Austin-based band Far From Saints. One of her pieces became the artwork for the band's lyric video for "Take It Through the Night," released in March 2023.

Edgar also earned an Award of Merit at the Springville Museum of Art's 88th Annual Spring Salon in 2012 and showed a piece titled "Seeking Buoyancy" at the museum as recently as 2025. Her mother worked in clay and kept a kiln in the garage growing up. Two decades and several mediums later, Edgar is back in three dimensions herself, shaping ceramic sculptures and papier-mâché forms alongside her paintings.

Gallery MAR, owned by Maren Mullin, is open Monday through Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Thursday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The phone number is (435) 649-3001.