Who is Sarah Ann Smith?

Hello, my name is Sarah Ann Smith.

Color. Line. Texture. Imagery. Stories. OK...hang on....Artists’ statements are often so stuffy—erg! But quilters aren’t stuffy, and most artists aren’t either when they are in the creative zone. I want to share this passion to create and the quilts that I make, and to show people that they, too, can be creative. Not all of us create in the same way; one friend is a much more inventive cook than I will ever be, but I can enjoy reading her e-mails about what’s for dinner---and wish I were eating her dinner instead of mine! In much the same way, I hope that folks who love quilts will enjoy and be inspired by mine, even if they want to make something different.

I want to make the art, and hope that people will like and respond to it. When I read, I love good fiction. Too much reality becomes tedious: I like to be entertained with a story. I hope that in some way my quilts tell stories, too. It doesn’t matter if the story one person sees in the quilt is different from mine or another viewer’s, I just hope that folks will enjoy the quilt.

My subject matter varies. I focused on people first because I felt they are the hardest to do well. I find the challenge of capturing a representation of a person (or a part of them, like their hands) to be one of the hardest things I could do, and I love it when I actually get the image in my head into the cloth successfully. I am always learning; I’ve never made a quilt from which I didn’t learn a new method (even if it was after the quilt was done, when I think…Oh! Geez…if I had done it that way instead it would have been so much easier). But I loved the technicolor portrait of our family pug and think doing the cats would be fun, and am feeling a pull to return to some landscape quilts, too.

Now I'm working on work that celebrates where I live in midcoast Maine. Lurking in the back of my head is the tiny seed of a larger story, to create a new place or world—perhaps infused by the fiction I read and mythologies from various cultures. I’m hoping for time (ever elusive) to let that seed germinate and grow until it is ready to move from the dark confines of my brain and into quilts. Inspiration is everywhere, we just need to be open to receive it and transform it into art. As far as the actual techniques, I use whatever I need to achieve the desired effect including dyeing, painting, hand and machine quilting, embroidery, embellishment with beads, yarns, and any suitable object, piecing, and applique (hand, machine, raw-edge, fused or not...you name it!), and many more yet to be discovered and tried. I stitch intensively on my home sewing machine with a variety of threads that would make a beginning quilter shudder at the cost! The good news: if you add a few at a time, you can build a lovely stash of color!