Introducing Sara Crochet

Sara Crochet is a Cuban Cajun American multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and photographer from southern Louisiana. She is a full-force creative with a vintage heart, a filmmaker's eye, and a storyteller's soul. An analog romantic with a digital mind, and a firm believer that everyone deserves to create, to play, and to be seen.

Her practice moves fluidly between photography, film, creative direction, fabrication, costume design, and digital art, as layered as the mediums she works in. For Sara, art transcends mere expression. It embodies survival, reflection, and healing. Each frame she captures and every story she unfolds serves as a way of making sense of the world.

By day, she serves as the sole creative engine at Parish Brewing Company, working as their in-house photographer, filmmaker, social media manager, and creative director. Every other hour, she is making something else entirely.

A graduate of UL Lafayette with a BA in Cinema Studies and a minor in Visual Arts, her debut film "Exulansis" won the Gold Prize in the 2018-2019 Nikon Photo Contest, bringing her to Tokyo to accept the award while the film toured Southern Asia and Europe. In 2019, she deepened her craft at the Nikon-NOOR Academy in Barcelona, studying ethical visual journalism alongside some of the world's leading photographers.

Other works have received recognition: photographs published in Photography in the Visual Culture 2021, by Serradifalco Editore, in collaboration with Musa International Art Space, Milan, Italy. Her music video for Kid Charleroi, "Daytime Moon," was featured in the Southern Screen Festival 2023. Loudhouse, a collective dedicated to pushing the boundaries of contemporary art, showed her sculptures "Pill House" (2023) and installation art "Confessional" (2024). In 2025, two of her music videos were selected for the Southern Screen Film Festival: "Low Heat" for Faustina and "Los Angeles" for Kid Charleroi. Her digital painting "Feufollet" was selected in late 2024 as one of 20 public ArtBoxes installed across Lafayette in 2025 by the Lafayette Public Art Network, a piece born from Louisiana folklore and made as a homage to a neighbor and friend the community lost too soon. She has designed costumes for productions including "Send in the Clowns" by Nicole Curtis at the Acadiana Center for the Arts and "Ti Canailles" by Gina Aswell at Basin Arts, bringing the same tenderness to the garments that she brings to everything she touches.

Recent and ongoing ventures include maintaining clients at her freelance creative studio, S.C. Productions, and co-founding and running the Freetown Flea Market (@freetownfleamarket) with her best friend Courtney Scott, a community art market rooted in the belief that creativity thrives when people are given a place to gather. She also curates, restores, and repairs vintage garments for her project Shop Mom's Laundry (@shopmomslaundry), a vintage shop built on preservation, play, and the things worth keeping.

At the heart of it all, her work is about people, memory, and the quiet courage it takes to just be human. You can find some of her artwork and photographs on display at Wild Child for Festival International, and online at @s.c.portfolio or saracrochet.com.

Who makes up your art circle?

So many people! I see my art circle as more of a Venn diagram of circles, all different groups but overlapping in the middle. At the heart of it all are my guardian angels: Jill and my abuela Lourdes. Both were amazingly strong women and inspiring artists. They both showed me by example that you can do anything you put your mind to. Learn a new trade, start a new project, collect another hobby, you got this! I keep their prayer cards on my car visor, and they inspire me daily to be more like them and just have fun creating.

Surrounding that center is my support system: my best friends, my family, my friends abroad, my neighbors, my therapist, my classmates, and all my friends in the photo and film world. Each group in its own circle, yet somehow looped together. I think the common thread is the mutual joy we all get from sharing and helping people accomplish their goals.

How do you expand your art circle?

By reaching out, showing up, being curious, and listening. By practicing the art of noticing and straight up just being weird in public. I love meeting new people and figuring out common interests, how everyone is connected, and where our paths may have crossed in the past. It's also so rewarding to fix missed connections by bridging gaps, kind of like a puzzle. My best friend Courtney and I founded the Freetown Flea Market (@freetownfleamarket) a little under a year ago for exactly that reason! To create a space for local artists to blossom, connect, and bring more life and passion to Freetown.

What value do you see in having a creative community?

Growing up, I never wanted to bother people, so I rarely asked for help. I still get caught up in that mindset from time to time, but we are learning and unlearning, okay?! It wasn't until late in college that I started challenging myself to try new things: going to dance classes, auditions, art workshops, working film sets, or silly events like janky karaoke and cajun jams. It was then that I really learned what community looked like. People could just be candid and play, and that was liberating. After a while, I wanted to share all my circles with one another, which led me to hosting events, parties, you name it. Realizing other people enjoyed helping others as much as I did helped me start using my voice. It really does take a village, and as they say, "closed mouths don't get fed!" A creative community should be a safe place, a think tank, a place where ideas can breathe and grow. Artists see life through a different lens, so this community is more than just about art. It's a shoulder to lean on in times of need, a glimmer of hope when you least expect it, and most of all a tool that helps you discover your fullest potential.

How does your artistic approach contribute to your community?

My artwork started as a form of therapy for myself. If I needed to get something out of my mind or wanted to document a feeling without words, I would make art. My hope is that the viewer can find something relatable in my work, maybe an emotion they have been needing to unlock, or relief from something that's been burdening them. For example, my confessional booth at Loudhouse was an artwork made to provide a space to anonymously confess something, to strip away shame and say: we are all together in this. When I'm doing client portraiture and documenting people, I want my work to feel genuine and for the subject to just be themselves. If they need help, I guide them toward those perfectly imperfect, candid shots—the ones that turn memories into art itself.

Art as therapy is such an amazing and cathartic tool. In my work, I want to remind people that we are all just human; it's everyone's first time here. Living, dancing, playing, rejoicing, mourning, lamenting, laughing— whatever it is, we're here, and we are not alone.