Sarah Ann Smith
A Sense of Place 1: The Tree
27" h x 20" w
Detail photo below
Katherine McNeese Collection
Gold Donor
To visit Sarah's website, click here.
To visit her blog, click here.
Commercial cotton prints and batiks, hand-painted black cotton, yarn, trilobal polyester and metallic thread. Fusible applique, free-motion quilting.
I had a dream about making a quilt of a Maine stone wall. When I woke up, I knew I had to make this quilt to honor the memories of my father, Thomas Joseph Maleady, Sr., who survived throat cancer at the age of 82, my half-brother Charles Maleady, who died of throat cancer at the age of 46, and my friend Linda Macintosh Wauchope, who died of liver cancer in her mid-forties.
Even though I have only lived two and a half years in Maine, the iconography of the landscape has worked its way into my subconscious and back out in this quilt. I love the bright, clear winter days, the sunlight slipping through the woods and onto the stone walls that trace the landscape. This quilt is the first of what I believe will be a series called "A Sense of Place" that will focus on features and colors that define a region or place. In this particular piece, I wanted to make the wall, but in bright joyous colors that echo my joy in the bright Maine winters.
When I "found" quilting, I knew I would be happy: it is the perfect marriage of the two things I love to do most: sew and make art. My work tends to the representational (some might say hopelessly literal!); even when I try to make an abstract piece, I think of it in terms like "planet," "wall," "tree-like-thing," "cloud-nebula- thing." In terms of style and techniques, I think of myself as an eclectic opportunist: I use whatever materials and techniques it takes to make the picture in my head come to life in cloth and thread.
Above all, I love the color and I love the line. The color of a quilt draws me in, the complexity of the line keeps me there. Both color and line can come from the fabric itself, the thread, the quilting, paint, beads, you name it.
Although I've been sewing since I made my first clothes for my trolls at age 6, I am largely self- taught in art, and continue to study and learn. I love sharing my passion for my art with my sons, and love that they are growing up in a house where art is considered as essential to life as breathing.
Sarah Ann Smith's artwork is held in collections in the United States and United Kingdom, including the International Quilt Festival Collection. In 2007, her work will be seen at International Quilt Festival - Houston, the New England Quilt Museum, the Camden (Maine) Public Library and other venues.
