Artist-In-Residence: Dreher Island State Park

My 5th Artist-in-Residence opportunity with South Carolina State Parks brought me to Dreher Island State Park this October, just outside of Columbia, SC. I spent the week hiking, exploring, observing, and creating art. The spacious lake-side villa gave me an opportunity to watch the sunset every single day of my stay and also a peaceful place to create fiber art & paintings surrounded by nature.

I only left the park for a few hours one day to hike the Firebreak Trail in Harbison State Forrest, but other than that, all of my hikes and explorations were inside the park. There’s enough trails and flat walkable roads that you can see almost all of the park on foot, if you like. It’s a large park but most of it is lake, so although I didn’t have a boat, I can see why so many people visit just for the fishing. The park is on a series of islands in Lake Murray and so there’s an enormous amount of shoreline, countless coves and plenty of peninsulas.

During my time at Dreher Island I created eleven needle felted landscapes, one mixed media fiber art landscape, two small paintings, and two series of painted pendants, all inspired by the natural beauty around the lake and forest. I loved the way the color of the lake depended on the sky, and one of my favorite color observations was the shock of orange at the shore where the water meets the red clay.

A huge thank you to South Carolina State Parks for selecting me for this program - it’s an honor! And thank you to Dreher Island State Park for hosting me for the week - I really enjoyed it! South Carolina really is a beautiful state and we are lucky to have so many parks to visit. I can easily find inspiration in all of them!

I hope you enjoy this short recap video of my week and all pieces are now available at www.onceagainsam.com

In Love with a Palette Knife

Have you ever felt like you need to loosen up? I’ve been chasing precision with my recent needle felted and mixed media landscapes, and felt like it was time to shake things out a bit. I switched gears for a few glorious weeks and had a love affair with my neglected palette knife. I don’t know that I’ve ever actually tried to move paint around this way before but man, it’s so satisfying!

New Palette Knife Landscape Paintings

First, I played around with some abstracted landscapes, mostly minis, just to see what I could come up with and how it felt to not have full control over what the paint was doing on my panels. Keeping the subject matter safe, I did some mountains, fields, and lake scenes and called it a day. It was fun, but it wasn’t quite scratching the itch.

Statement Necklace

Next I moved onto jewelry, revisiting my Studio Graffiti Collection which in the past has always been on clear acrylic, which I paint with random brush strokes from the backside. Changing things up, I used the palette knife and some heavy matte medium to thicken up my paint, and went to town scraping and sliding pigment all over my thin boards. Pleased with the first few test pieces, I got a little carried away and turn this experiment into a whole series, and I don’t regret a thing!

Painted Pendant

Enjoy the new mini paintings and on-of-a-kind jewelry just added to the website. All pieces are painted with my trust palette knife, with acrylic paint on wood, and are one-of-a-kinds.

Painted Earrings

Paint Rings

Spring 2018 Launches

During the winter months of 2018, I often found myself playing with paint in the studio. I made time to practice each week, invested in new brushes, and even took an intro to alcohol inks class at Greenville Center for Creative Arts in March. I’ve been inspired by the medium! The textural and graphic possibilities of paint have greatly influenced my new jewelry collections this spring. I’m excited to finally share these new additions to my Etsy shop with you. Each piece is an original one-of-a-kind, but thanks to the simple settings and delicate scale, they’re easy to incorporate into your everyday-style.

See the process in my new Maker's Eye View video on YouTube!

Alcohol Ink Collection: drips and splatters showcasing beautiful unpredictable patterns in colorful dyes, frozen in time on clear acrylic.

Mixed Media Collection: clear acrylic layered with crumbled gold leaf, pale pink paint with stark black accents, framed in a variety of simple metal bezels and laser etched wooden settings.

Landscape Mood

June is for landscapes

I’ve been on a landscape kick for the last two months. This new-to-me obsession has recently appeared in my handmade jewelry and fiber art, and has gotten me interested in improving my painting skills as well. I can trace this inspiration back to 3 specific assignments I received during a month-long art challenge called #creativesprint. Here’s the blog post if you missed it.

Although the assignments were diverse, and I used different mediums as much as possible, these 3 challenges had a similar outcome. On April 9th, the assignment was to create something inspired by water - I painted 3 seascape pendants. On the 15th, the assignment was to work with your non-dominant hand - I awkwardly painted an abstract scene with my left hand. On the 17th, we were challenged to create something inspired by a poem - I chose Whitman’s “Pioneers! O  Pioneers!” and needle felted a landscape inside a small embroidery hoop.

Those pieces were just for fun, an excuse to give my creative mind a bit of a workout, but I’ve been in a landscape mood ever since. I recently launched this series of 7 pendants featuring bright blue skies and wide-open prairie, and just posted this #MakersEyeView video showing the process (time lapse) to my YouTube channel.

Watch how Sarah Mandell of Once Again Sam paints a landscape featuring cloudy skies and wide-open prairie, then turns them into 7 one-of-a-kind pendants. Wear an original painting everyday! Checkout Once Again Sam on Etsy: www.onceagainsam.com

This week, I’m excited to be launching this limited edition series of 5 needle felted landscapes. Each piece goes live at 8PM EST, one per day, starting Monday June 6th, through Friday June 10th. Pick out your favorite and follow me on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter to see the introductions this week!