Wonders of Wool Exhibition

I’m thrilled to team up with fellow fiber artist Cecilia Ho for a joint exhibition at the Metropolitan Arts Council gallery now through February 18th. Cecilia and I are both self-taught and although we work in the same medium and have a few techniques in common, our work is very different. I love how the exact same materials can yield totally different results!

The opening reception is Friday January 21st from 6:30-9 at the gallery (16 Augusta Street, Greenville, SC). All are welcome! There will be food, wine and other refreshments, and Cecilia and I would love to meet you and share our work with you.

About the show:

Wool is all around us. It’s in our closets, our blankets, our shoe insoles, and even the insulation in our homes. This incredible natural material has been used for centuries for a wide range of practical solutions, but in this joint exhibition Cecilia Ho and Sarah Mandell explore the material purely for its beauty. With 25 years of combined fiber art experience, Ho and Mandell use needle felting, wet felting, nuno felting with silk fabric, rug hooking and punch needle techniques to create 2D and 3D work inspired by all aspects of nature.

Enjoy this sneak peek virtual tour of the gallery!

For more information about the gallery, or to purchase work, please contact Metropolitan Arts Council: https://www.greenvillearts.com/

Greenville Open Studios: This Weekend!

Calling all Greenville-area art lovers! This weekend (November 13 & 14) is Metropolitan Arts Council’s Open Studios event, where over 100 local artists open up their workspaces and invite the public in to see where the magic happens. Greenville is a very artsy city, and if you live here, there’s a pretty high chance you have an artist living in your neighborhood. Now’s your chance to get out there and meet them and learn about their work!

Plan your route using the Metropolitan Arts Council (MAC) app on their website - you can filter my name, medium, location. I’m stop #59 in Greer.

I’ve always enjoyed visiting studios in the past, but I’ve never participated. Our previous home, where I grew this small biz from 2011 up until about 9 months ago, wasn’t laid out in a way where I could have a lot of visitors, and my workspaces were separated on 3 different floors. Not great for Open Studios. When we started house hunting, one of top things we were searching for was a home with a large workspace, where ALL of my artistic and business needs could be met in one place. We got lucky - we found such a space in Greer, SC, just 4 miles away! I can’t wait to invite you into my home studio next weekend to show you where I create jewelry, fiber art, and run my small business.

I’m not the only artist out this way - there’s so may of us here! I just met my neighbor down the road, artist James Greene, because of Open Studios. He’s a mixed media sculptor and he’s new to the event this year as well. Go check him out while you’re in the area. His barn / studio is full of so many fascinating treasures, and there’s a very sweet, very large pig living in the backyard. Win, win, if you ask me.

One stop you should not miss is the MAC art gallery downtown. The current exhibition is all 12x12 work from each artist participating in Open Studios this year. That grid wall is a dream, so many different subject matters, mediums, and styles, all scaled to this one uniform dimension. It’s a great way to get a taste of the art scene in Greenville and may also help you plan which studios you want to visit.

Here’s a look at a blog post I wrote after touring some of the studios in 2018.

Flat Out Under Pressure Competition

Every year in June the Metropolitan Arts Council hosts the Flat Out Under Pressure competition for local artists. It’s a fun thing the community looks forward to every year. We bring our surfaces to get stamped the morning of the competition, then have 24 hours to complete the work. This year, due to the COVID19 pandemic, the whole thing is virtual. Instead of getting our surfaces officially stamped at the MAC office, we signed and dated the blank piece before starting.

The last 2 years I have summited a needle felted wool landscape, but this year I changed things up just a bit. Since MAC is the whole reason I learned rug hooking last year (thanks to a continuing education grant) I thought it would be cool to show them what I have been doing with my new skills!

This year’s piece includes needle felting, rug hooking, and punch needle techniques. I used over 40 materials and colors, and 8 different tools for the 3 fiber art mediums. It’s SO much fun to combine materials like this! Here’s a look at my progress from yesterday - I took photos every few hours to show how the piece was coming along. It was really slow going at first. I only covered a few inches of my surface in the first few hours, but I kept at it and 12 hours later, I was happy with my finished piece. I did take a few breaks during the day so I think all in all I spent about 10 hours on the 16x16 piece.

The Flat Out Under Pressure exhibition will be virtual this year, and will begin on July 1. The winner of the competition will be announced Monday by noon, and of course all the runner’s up as well (which is also a pretty big deal!). There are quite a few other “winners” and they’ll get a cash prize plus the honor of having their work prominently displayed on one of Greenville’s recycling bins downtown.

My finished piece, plus 2 other test pieces I did prior to try out ideas and see how large I could go for the 24 hour competition, will all be available for purchase soon. I’m so glad I found out I couldn’t finish a 20x20 in the amount of time aloted BEFORE it was the actual competition. That would have been a pretty frustrating thing to learn when it mattered most.

My wrists are sore, but I’m so happy I was able to participate in FOUP2020 this year, even though there will be no big party to announce the winners as before. Even still, this has been a bright spot in my week!

Open Studios 2018

Metropolitan Arts Council in Greenville does a very cool thing every year called Open Studios, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. Artists all over the city open their studios and invite the community inside to see where they work. Every year, I end up scheduling a craft show that conflicts with Open Studios, so I never get to do it. This year, however, I was excited to have well-timed free weekend so I could experience the self-paced tour with my husband!

Here’s some of my favorite stops:

Sunny Mullarkey

Kate Furman

Joseph Bradley

Janina Tukarski Ellis

Paul Flint

Diane Kilgore

Annie Koelle

Kent Ambler

It’s so inspiring to see artists at work in their space. I love the piles of crusty paint tubes, the unfinished panels stacked in corners, the works in progress on the easel, and of course the final product matted and ready to hang. Buying work straight from the artist is also very rewarding because you’re making a connection with the actual person who created the piece you love, which isn’t always possible at a gallery. This weekend we added six new pieces to our collection. Can’t wait to hang them!

I would love to participate in Open Studios one day as an artist. It would be so much fun to welcome people into my workspace and share my process in person. However, our home is just not set up for that - the different workspaces are spread out all over our house - but we’re hoping to move sometime soon and set up our ideal workshop, so perhaps in the future this dream will be realized. Till then, here’s a short video tour of my studio.