Ongoing Art Projects
These projects can come to your community.
Weaving Water (2018-present)
Weaving Water is a socially engaged public art project exploring the intersections of water, weaving and shared experience both visible and invisible. Participants are invited to become part of an informal indigo dye and weaving workshop. They transform plain yarn or cloth through a series of steps: folding and binding the cloth or fiber, wetting it out in water from site-specific locations, dipping in indigo dye vats, unfolding to reveal the pattern made. These dyed materials are transformed again as participants weave them into new cloth on the SAORI loom, obscuring the patterns made as these fibers become part of a new whole. Participants are transformed from a group of strangers to an operating fiber studio team.
The experiences connects the ideas of how we can make new patterns from old and how cloth connects us directly to the natural world and our shared human history of creativity. Each individual creates their own patterns using the same steps but produces unique results. The dyed fibers bear the makers’ personal imprints and absorbs the unique qualities of the water used in the dye process. The methods used are clear metaphors of how we can grapple with complex environmental and social puzzles.
Through ongoing public workshops that are commissioned by partners, Weaving Water can come to your community or organization to host a customized workshop or talk. Through this meditative learning and handcraft experience, strangers become a team and water becomes a basis for addressing shared challenges together.
See examples of Weaving Water projects in my Portfolio.
Notice Nature Everywhere (2021-present)
Notice Nature Everywhere is an ongoing social practice art project that engages the public in observing nature as it is found where we live, work and play. From big trees to parking lot saplings, planned gardens to abandoned landscapes, plants offer us a chance to connect with the land, each other and our unique histories. Sarah’s beautiful materials, tools, and prompts put the public in the role of the naturalist-observer and creative interpreter, encouraging teaching and learning as a community and producing tangible references that capture knowledge generated by participants.
Sarah collaborates with organizations to reach new audiences and fulfill mission to engage all communities served. Sarah will work with your organization to highlight the hidden stories and histories accessible through the plants growing around us and create ways for new voices to be heard. The creative products can be paper-based to app-based, ephemeral galleries to perennial guides filled with illustrations by participants and/or Sarah. Reach out to learn more about how Sarah can bring her deep knowledge and lively engagement style to your event and help your audience connect in a deep and transformative way to the landscapes we inhabit in our daily lives.