Christian Petersen Design Award
College of Design
Established in 1980 to recognize alumni, staff, and friends of the university for contributions to the advancement of design through personal aesthetic achievement, exceptional support, or extraordinary encouragement and service

Priscilla Kepner Sage

Ames, Iowa

Internationally acclaimed artist and ISU associate professor emerita of art and design, Priscilla Kepner Sage has spent the past 50 years pushing the boundaries of textile and fiber media into the realm of sculpture and fine art. Her work expresses essential relationships between humans and nature, embodying and expanding upon the patterns and forms found in natural objects.

Sage’s free-hanging fabric sculptures have been exhibited in galleries throughout the United States and around the world. Her first big commission—a 12-foot-long spiral sculpture for the lobby of the Hoover State Office Building in Des Moines—was also the first project funded by the Iowa Art in State Buildings program. She completed a commission for the ISU College of Human Sciences in 2007, and her work hangs in ISU’s Jischke Honors Building, the Campanile Room of the Memorial Union, and the dean’s suite in the College of Business.

Sage, who earned a bachelor’s degree from Pennsylvania State University and an MFA in sculpture from Drake University, was on the art and design faculty at Iowa State from 1984 until her retirement in 2000. She also taught at Drake University for 18 years.

Sage and her husband, Charles, have two children: Andrew ’91 and Abigail ’97.