We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sara Rosenthal a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sara, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

During the pandemic, a significant body of new paintings was lost, and after that experience I stopped painting altogether for about a year. I had been intrigued by weaving for years, but had never seriously pursued it beyond a small antique traveling loom that I brought with me everywhere and wove by hand. So during this yearlong hiatus from painting, I took an online course, a beginner’s intro to weaving class, and I absolutely fell in love. Working with new textures, approaching this new craft from a beginner’s mindset, and having the freedom to improvise without worrying about the results was a brilliant re-engagement with a very humble, excited, student-y mindset. Weaving is like other crafts in that the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know. After painting for many years, I have developed an approach that feels like my own, and a familiarity with the materials and ways of working that I like to use. But weaving has opened up endless channels of fascinating new possibilities. It is gratifying to know that I will probably continue to feel like a novice weaver for years and years. Learning new stitches and patterns is fun for me, in a nerdy art research kind of way, and I love diving deeper into the history of and culture surrounding each stitch, approach, and textile material.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a visual artist working with painting, weaving, multimedia installations, performance, and sometimes film. I am also a writer and independent researcher, and these different strands all influence each other. My work addresses transformations and cultural myth-making, exploring cosmic and microscopic perspectives. I usually make work that is colorful, textural, expressive, and dynamic, with abstract elements that allow the viewer to bring their own understanding to the canvas, sculpture, or installation.

Recently, I have been making cosmic weavings inspired by images of deep space. I started the project in the months leading up to the James Webb Space Telescope launch. Now the JWST is in orbit and beaming back mind-blowing pictures of galaxies, planets, and stars- images that reveal the very origins of our universe.

So I’m using weaving, one of the oldest forms of human technology, to depict imagery received from Webb, one of the most sophisticated new technologies invented. The small weavings can be combined to make monumental installations, and also framed individually to reveal little windows signifying infinite vistas.

I have also been incorporating more natural symbolic materials into my work- seeds, shells, plants, animal fibers. These materials resonate with my research around the Anthropocene- our current geologic age, one in which humans have had an indelible impact.

My current bodies of work explore how we can coexist more symbiotically with the other life forms that inhabit this planet. Through paintings, installations, performances, and wild/ witchy ritual practices, I make space for sacred modes of communication that exist outside, beneath, around, and through verbal and linguistic expressions.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

There is not one particular story that springs to mind, but more an ongoing pattern. To be a practicing professional artists requires endless resilience. If you don’t do the work, no one else is going to bother you about it- the work simply won’t exist. If you don’t apply for opportunities, you definitely will not get them. And when you do apply, you will get rejected again and again and again. Each time I apply for a deeply meaningful opportunity, I pour time, energy, inspiration, and hope into it. If a rejection comes, as they so often do, I have learned to give myself space to mourn a bit. To have a little cry. To feel down for a day. And then I don’t dwell, I pick myself up and move myself forward, back into the fray, seeking new opportunities. Eventually, something sticks, and then that leads to new avenues and exciting pathways. And even when things seem mired in inertia, each new project proposal or grant application strengthens the application muscle, refines an artistic vision, and provides space for me to generate new ideas. So I carry those ideas forward into the next layers, and the next.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I think education is extremely important for supporting artists and creatives. I work with young students sometimes and it is incredible to me how clear the distinction is between young learners who have been encouraged to pursue their creativity and those who have been instructed to shut it down, either implicitly or explicitly. Every person has creative ability within them, it is definitely not limited to those of us who decide to pursue the professional path as an artist. Fostering creative exploration from a young age is key for supporting creatives and artists alike. Providing a foundation of knowledge and understanding about the arts can break down cultural taboos, and class- based barriers or entrenched pathways that may restrict access to the arts for diverse communities.

And, in general, funding for the arts is key. Putting protections in place to help support artists and creators against precarity, providing more funded opportunities for artists at every stage of their career, creating more funded residencies and accessible grants, and generating consumer support for artists and creatives over AI designs or Amazon purchases- these are all ways to contribute to a thriving creative ecosystem.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.saratrueart.com/
• Instagram: @saratrueart
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/saratrueart
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-rosenthal-33a130b6/
• Other: https://vimeo.com/saratrueart

Image Credits
M R Webber