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/

Artist-in-Residence: Cheraw State Park

Time in the woods, by a lake, or anywhere out in nature is what restores me the most. Making things with my hands is what gives me energy and joy. Put the two together and I’m one happy adventuring artist! My week as Artist-in-Residence at Cheraw State Park in South Carolina was such a wonderful experience. This was my fourth consecutive residency through the Parks program and as before, each experience is totally unique and always exceeds my hopes and aspirations. I feel so lucky to be invited to these parks each time, and it’s definitely one of the highlights of my year.

Cheraw is a small town near the Great Pee Dee river in northeastern South Carolina. I’ve lived in SC since 2010 had never been to this part of the state, so I was eager to get out and explore. The park sits on 7,000 acres of lake and woodlands, and is home to a huge variety of birds and other creatures.

Each day during my stay, I watched the sun rise at the lake, then went off for several hours of hiking either around the park or within a 30-40 drive. The afternoons were spent back at the cabin, creating needle felted landscapes, jewelry designs, and paintings inspired by what I’d seen earlier that day. Then I’d head back over to the lake for the sunset and a quiet stroll before a little more creative time back at the cabin in the evening. I love this schedule - explore, create, explore some more!

Favorite Things: about Cheraw:

Hiking Trail: The Cheraw State Park Trail

Sunrise Viewing & Birdwatching Spot: The Eureka Lake Boardwalk

Park Wildlife: Fox squirrels, woodpeckers, and deer!

Plant Life: Cypress trees growing in the water and the carnivorous flowers by the beach

Daytrip Destination: Carolina Sandhills Wildlife Refuge (Tate’s Trail)

The new collection created while at the park is now available on my website. I hope you’ll enjoy this short recap video of my art-cation experience!

A huge thank you to the South Carolina Parks program for hosting these residency’s and a special thanks to the Park Rangers at Cheraw for making me feel so welcome.

If you’re interested in hearing about my past residency’s with the South Carolina Parks Department, you can find them here:

2020 Devil’s Fork

2019 Edisto Beach

2018 Poinsett

Diamondscapes

Mini needle felted landscapes framed in a brand new shape. These 3” x 3” rounded-edge diamond frames are custom made with a CNC router, and the new shape add so much interest to the tiny textile pieces when they’re hung. They’re great hung on their own, displayed in clusters, or I like to use them to fill in those weird gaps in my gallery wall (don’t worry, we all have em’).

Although I’ve certainly tried felting smaller than this, just to see if I could do it, I keep coming back to this 3” size. I’m able to get enough detail at this scale to create actual scenes, not just abstract landscapes, plus they ship extremely well, I can work on these while I’m traveling since they don’t require a lot of supplies, and the price point works with most budgets.

As much as I love working large, those pieces are always a risk and take longer to sell. With these mini’s, they’re often sold out in a few hours or days after the launch, so mark your calendars for September 1st when they go live. Or, if you want to get first dibs with my newsletter subscribers, signup here.

Enjoy the collection! I hope to do one or two more mini landscape collections before the end of the year. Stay tuned!

Mixed Media Collection: July 2021

I can never get enough texture, and ever since I learned rug hooking and punch needle, and how it could compliment my decade of needle felting experience, I’ve been falling in love with the layers, colors, and depth made possible by working with yarn, wool fiber, and fabric, all at once.

These mixed media pieces have been such a joy to make, but dang, they’re slow. I thought needle felting was slow, but it feels like a breeze compared to this! I have only ever had 2 or 3 pieces available at a time in the past, so this summer my goal was to have a substantial collection to offer. 7 pieces may not sound like a lot but it’s weeks and weeks worth of work, plus one of those pieces is 24x36 which is by far my largest mixed media piece to date. I’m so happy to work large!

One other idea I have had floating around in my head was adding embroidery or stitching to these mixed media pieces. That’s the beauty of mixed media - no rules and anything goes! I’m thrilled with how the wild flowers turned out, my very first attempts at hand stitching tiny details with yarn.

Enjoy the new series (now available on the website) and be sure to check out the process video so you can see one of these made from start to finish.

Artist-in-Residence: The Reserve at Lake Keowee

I’m just getting back from a fantastic stay at the Reserve at Lake Keowee as Artist-in-Residence. The community was so welcoming, the scenery beautiful, and it was so easy to find inspiration. Not only did I create art on-site, but I also did a workshop, artist's talk, and live plein air demo. I always get so much out of exploring new places, and Lake Keowee had so much to offer!

Lake Keowee in the Round (15” diameter)

Each morning I got up to watch the sunrise and enjoy a walk before the day got too toasty. The Reserve has many walking trails and hiking paths, some in the hilly pine forests, some along the emerald lake. I saw creatures almost every I ventured out, including my first-ever bear sighting in the wild. While distracted by a very busy armadillo who didn’t seem to mind our presence, we followed him down the trail, and suddenly realized there was an adult black bear about 40 yards away. I got one blurry photo and turned around. My husband and I didn’t finish our hike that day!

Black Swallowtail Butterfly in White Frame (6x8)

FAVORITE THINGS:

SIGHTS: Pink sunrises and that glorious color fade from the red clay earth to the emerald green water along the shoreline.

SMELLS: Pine needles in the sun.

SOUNDS: Crows laughing at me and gossiping high up in the trees.

TASTE: The grouper special at the clubhouse the first night of the residency. So so good!

MOMENT: Armadillo/bear sighting on a hike and doing the plein air demo at the pagodas while chatting with a wonderful group of ladies.

Trees at Settlement Village (9x12)

Every day had something to look forward to, whether it was a meal with members of the community, teaching a sold-out workshop full of extremely talented ladies, exhibiting my work and speaking about why I work in so many mediums, or paddling around in a kayak for a few hours. I always made time to work, but I didn’t put too much pressure on myself to stay inside all day and create, as I’ve done on past residencies (and regretted). This was a wonderful balance of scheduled events, adventuring, and creative time.

Flowers by the Green (5x7 oval)

Once Again Sam’s Nature Report:

• Woodpeckers

• Turkeys

• Bunnies

• Deer

• Herons

• Squirrels & chipmunks

• American crows

• Groundhogs

• Black swallowtail & eastern tiger swallowtail butterflies

• Geese

• Lizards

• Snake

• Armadillo

• BLACK BEAR!!!!!

Laurel Pond Pines (13x13): SOLD

Part of the deal with most residency programs is that the artist donates a pieces from the collection inspired by or made during the residency. This piece below is the largest one I made of the Reserve and it was the one I chose to donate to the Community Foundation because it features one of the best views there, in my opinion. This is the view of Pinnacle Mountain from the top of the hill in front of the clubhouse and it looks breathtaking any time of day, even in the rain.

The View from the Clubhouse (14x20): DONATED

I can’t say enough good things about The Reserve. It was an honor to be chosen to be the Aritst-in-Residence for 2021 and it was such a great experience on every level! Enjoy this short video recap of my week and be sure to check www.oneagainsam.com for all available fiber art pieces made during the residency. Many of the pieces found forever-homes with residents which I was still at The Reserve, which is exactly what I had hoped would happen, but several other pieces are up for grabs!