08 Sep 2024 Artist of the Month: Sage Sizer
By Donna Lampkin Stephens
Sage Sizer has had a camera in her hand for as long as she can remember, but her creative soul isn’t satisfied with just one outlet.
Little Rock’s Sizer, 47, is a fashion photographer for Dillard’s, but in her spare time, she also travels and does street photography, as well as graphic design. She and her husband, Morgan, have an online business, sizerskate.com, that sells skateboards and T-shirts featuring her designs.
“I think I need all of them,” she said. “It seems that when I have a photography job, I do more graphic design on the side. When I had a graphic design job, I tended to actually get out and take more pictures on the side.”
Sizer grew up in Texarkana, where she remembers walking around her neighborhood, camera in hand, photographing flowers and spending her allowance on film. Tagging along with her older sister to her high school darkroom, she found her niche, and her dad bought her a nice camera as she headed to Texas High School, where she eventually became photo editor of the newspaper and yearbook.
She went to Henderson State before transferring to University of Arkansas-Little Rock, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts with emphasis in photography and a minor in art history in 2000.
“I wanted to push myself in a different direction to learn a different style of photography, but I thought I’d end up back in photojournalism,” she said.
After graduation, she moved to Austin, Texas, where she worked as a school photographer, shooting senior pictures and state championship games in a variety of sports. She got a shot of WNBA player Brittney Griner dunking during her senior year.
A divorce left her a single mother with a toddler and infant, so she returned to Texarkana for a couple of years before taking a job as an imager—basically a graphic designer—at Dillard’s, where “we did everything from making clothes fit better to taking wrinkles out of the clothes, cleaning up stuff,” she said. She moved to product photography before landing as a fashion photographer about six years ago.
Fashion shoots might feature a model and a rack of clothes for internet sales or a shoot on location or in the Dillard’s studio.
“It could be anything—we might have a contemporary shoot for advertising and three or four different looks, then have time to schedule a kid shoot since you’re already on location,” said Sizer, who said she was the only female among the company’s three fashion photographers.
Her travel photography began when she was a single mom when her kids went to their father’s home for the summer. Nathan is now 16 and Judah is 13.
“Rather than being depressed, I started traveling and decided to make something of that time,” she said, remembering her first adventure to Colorado, where she camped and hiked.
“The second day I was there, a bear destroyed my campsite, and I had to put my big girl pants on and decide if I was courageous enough to stick it.”
She was.
She spent subsequent summers in various places in Europe. This year she and her husband, Morgan, whom she married in 2020, went to Arizona and Utah.
Her approach to street photography is simple.
“I just make a playlist, put my headphones in, walk the city and take pictures of what I see all day long,” she said.
During the pandemic, she and her husband, who is from South Africa, started Sizer Skate, where she creates deck designs for skateboards.
“Morgan skated when he was a teenager,” Sizer said. “I still can’t even stand on one, but Judah turned 9 that year and wanted a skateboard for his birthday. That’s when we started talking about it and getting it together. It was the first time skateboarding was in the Olympics, and people were getting out and being more active, so Morgan, knowing that I always need a side project to keep me busy, suggested we do that.”
She also designs T-shirts that are sold on the website.
Sizer is also pursuing a continuing education certificate in graphic design from the Art Institute of Chicago.
“Graphic design is constant learning just because all the programs are changing as quickly as they do,” she said. “Everything I’ve learned graphic design-wise has been self-taught or through YouTube videos. Photoshop was just coming out when I was at UALR, and I’d never used Illustrator.”
She’s taken three of the six required courses for the certificate. Somehow, it’s not surprising to hear that she will likely go on beyond the requirements.
“I really enjoy doing all of this, and I need to stay busy,” she said. “My husband and I are planning a trip to the East Coast. We’ll see what comes of that one.”
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