From the studio No. 37

We’ve come to the end of the year again and I’d like to wish you a Merry Christmas on this shortest day, from deepest darkest drizzly West Wales.

It is the Winter Solstice - Embrace the dark and carry the light.

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It’s been a great year in the SARAH POLAND studio, not without it’s hurdles and losses. I’ve worked hard on building a natural dyed clothing brand and am looking forward to next year - I have a few exciting projects in the pipeline, including a natural dye collaboration and plan to get out and show at various events, including the Frome Independent Market.

I’d love to see you out there somewhere.

Building my website, brand and getting the Ande Bomber ready to launch have been some highlights.

The website has lots of new pages to view - Why I Natural Dye Clothing, Why I Make Clothes In The UK, Zero Waste and Meet The Designer. I also have Archive pages of paintings and prints from over the years.

Exhibition wise it was really exciting to get in to the Royal Scottish Academy AND sell my painting (below). The VAS 100 (Visual Arts Scotland) centenary exhibition did look fantastic in the hallowed halls of the RSA.

Prosodic Chapters Of Immanent Silence.

Oak gall ink on traditional gesso on birch ply panel.

60 x 91cm.

There’s so much to do to start a business, it isn’t just make some stuff and sell it to a shop anymore! To sell online you need all sorts of things in place, a website, branding (plus a rebrand, thanks J.D. Sports!), a privacy policy, a returns policy, product pages, selling paypoint, good photography, GDPR…the list goes on…and on. Put on the spot, I can’t even remember half of it. Responsible, ethical sourcing is BIG.

As I mentioned before, the hurdle to rebrand away from SONNET by Sarah Poland, because of JD Sports’ interference, has taken up some time. I am glad to have fully embraced the change and am going with simply my name, SARAH POLAND. I now have a new logo, garment label and event sign. The website merge with my artist site will take some time, it’s tricky - trying not to over complicate it.

Any thoughts are most welcome.

Here is my new branding:

My time mentoring on the year long course at Newlyn School of Art this year was so fun, finding myself working beside old peers from my time in Cornwall was a joy and taking part in their tutors exhibition an honour.

Fashion On Earth, Bristol Cathedral with Sustainable Fashion Week UK was a blast and what a deadline to work towards! Thanks to Sustainable Studio in Cardiff and St. John’s Hall in Bath for giving me space.

Thanks too to Helen Manley-Jones at Yr Oriel in Newport, Pembrokeshire for always showing my work.

A new gallery who has taken on my Moon Drawing, photographic and oak gall work, is Tides Gallery in Swansea and their new showcase space, Tides Uplands.

Here are some glimpses from throughout the year.

Thank you for following my journey.

Wishing you a warm winter holiday filled with love and friendship.

Keep in touch, my best,

Sarah x

Inspired by 1950s coffee culture (think Beat Generation), 90s London + an inner rock chick fused with the colours of natural dyes.

Coffee bar, intimate gig + cocktail cool, with quality + sustainability at its core.

from the studio No. 34

On Wednesday 6th November, SUSTAINABLE FASHION WEEK hosted an event at Bristol Cathedral called FASHION ON EARTH. They invited me to take part in this exciting event which included a catwalk performance, makers market, exhibited pieces, live music plus other stalls including the Soil Association and GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard). It is an opportunity to discover some of the artists, makers and organisations working towards a better fashion future.

It’s going to be a really exciting event, not in the least, because artist Luke Gerram has created a large installation titled Gaia, a to scale, glowing sculpture of our planet Earth. It looks incredible and I can’t wait to see it. Gaia will hover above the catwalk.

I worked incredibly hard to get work ready for this event and it will be the first public viewing of SARAH POLAND the natural dyed, limited edition, UK made clothing brand. A launch of sorts.

I showcased a natural dyed corduroy bomber jacket in five different colours with a few one-off pieces - skirts and a kilt made from painted art pieces.

Sustainable Fashion Week UK says - 'The backdrop of Luke Gerram’s ‘Gaia’ serves as a provoking reminder of the interconnectedness of all life on earth. As with any resources our society consumes, the clothing and materials we wear and dispose of have a significant impact on planetary health’.

Launching the

Ande Bomber.

NATURAL DYED.

MADE IN THE UK.

MADE TO ORDER = NO SURPLUS, NO WASTE.

A natural dyed, limited edition, chunky corduroy bomber jacket. Lined in luxurious organic bamboo silk, five beautiful plant based colours to choose from, with contrasting coloured rib and a cheeky puff sleeve, corozo nut buttons and helping to clear plastic out of the environment, with a recycled plastic Vislon zip.

Lush.

Photography: Trevor Carty @tippee68

They also invited me to display one of my art pieces as a backdrop for my stall. My husband, Ben Duckworth, who runs Raven Roundwood Timber Frames, created a stunning exhibition stand for me using larch, oak, and bog oak. The natural beauty of the stand complemented my work perfectly and looked breathtaking in the cathedral's magnificent setting. It was a wonderful opportunity to showcase a large piece in such an awe-inspiring space.

A detail from Sarah Poland’s natural dyed hanging canvas installation Forest, displayed during her 2023 solo exhibition at Elysium Gallery in Swansea UK. The piece here uses madder, weld, chestnut and iron to naturally dye and paint on organic cotton canvas.

Gaia, by Luke Jerram 2024

We are critically disconnected from our clothing, how it is made, it’s natural source and the many hands each garment passes through before it reaches us. All the resources that clothe our bodies come from this Earth and how we choose to care for and use such resources plays a significant role in planetary health.

All clothing comes from the land. Farmed, grown, extracted, picked and cut - your clothing begins in the ground and should return to the soil at the end of its life-cycle.

FASHION on EARTH invites you to reflect on the relationship you have with your own clothing; to consider how connected you feel to the place and natural resources that are intrinsically linked to the garments you wear; and to imagine a fashion production future wholly connected to and respectful of the natural world.

Join us on Wednesday 6th November 2024 for a night exploring fashion that is created in harmony with nature.

Sustainable Fashion Week UK

Inspired by 1950s coffee culture (think Beat Generation), 90s London + an inner rock chick fused with the colours of natural dyes.

Coffee bar, intimate gig + cocktail cool, with quality + sustainability at its core.

STUDIO JOURNAL 9

From 1st May 2022 newsletter.

After much clearing space and decision making, the studio partition wall is down. The space has completely changed dynamics and I no longer ‘walk like an Egyptian’ to get in. Incase you don’t get it, I just quoted a song title - I’m now prompted me to look up the video on Youtube AND share it with you! The Bangles - Walk Like An Egyptian

Below are some photos showing progression of the studio interior wall dismantle.

Plaster board off

Posts and strengthening beam in, white paint next.

With this renewerd space I can start creating work for my solo exhibition at Elysium Gallery, a public gallery space in an old nightclub in Swansea, Wales, so lots of different and interesting spaces to fill. I’ve all sorts of ideas, including a 3-D painting installation, so now in the studio I can stretch out a little more. It’s very exciting.

However, I am in desperate need for a more permanent studio and painting store. Currently my work is stored in a static caravan, it isn’t ideal but it is somewhere seperate to the work space. I regularly empty two dehumidifiers and just recently I encountered a second leak. I’d say that storage is always an issue for artists, the work often takes up half of a studio space. So with this new leak I have lost a further 8 works on paper plus their frames. The previous flood brought damage to many large canvases.

Sharing a less glamorous side to being an artist, here is one of the damaged works, from my Ash Series.

Sooo, away from the Gloom…

I’ve been reading about quantum science and the quantum field for sometime through the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza, he also covers epigenetcs, neuro-science and meditation. It’s so interesting. When I start working on a series I don’t look at anyone else’s work but I read, including artists writings. I’m re-reading books In Praise Of Painting by Ian MacKeever RA, Resistance & Persistence Selected Writings by Sean Scully. I’m thinking I’ll look out my book of Bridget Riley’s writings, she writes with such insight on her own work and of other artists’. The new publication by Pace Gallery, Agnes Martin - The Distillation Of Colour, has arrived today. I am so looking forward to reading it. I’ve also been watching videos on Youtube of Brice Marden talking about his work. There’s such an incredible archive online. 

This week I’ve been making composition drawings and working out ideas for paintings for my solo exhibition in 2023. They're part of an Energy Field and Mapping series.

Mapping 1, botanical ink on etching paper, 23x24.5cm

Mapping 3, botanical ink on etching paper, 23x24.5cm

STUDIO JOURNAL 8

From 3rd April 2022 newsletter - Drawn to nature

Here on Friday morning in South-West Wales, we woke up with melted, hardened, snowy hail. Crunchy under foot, the school run brought back memories of Scottish winters driving through creaky snow laden roads.

I grew up in the Scottish Highlands, in an area of rich soils and deciduous forests, between the foothills of the Cairngorm mountains and the sea. For some years I spent every weekend during winter with the Cairngorm ski club; season pass strapped to my arm, balaklava and hat pulled high to protect my face from the often fierce and bitter weather. In fact, lunchtimes were regularly spent thawing out our gloves and balaclavas under hand driers whilst eating squished semi-frozen egg sandwiches.

However, when the weather was clear and dry, it felt like the most beautiful place in the world. More corries than peaks, deep and snow covered, it was a place where you looked down rather than across or up.

Infact, the Scots don’t call their hills mountains, they’re hills. I think there’s a modesty to it, they aren’t towering and grand like the Alps. Yet within this modesty belies an awe. They are awesome in the true sense of the word and having spent some time away now from both Cairngorm and Nevis Range, on occasion to return I have been humbly brought to a standstill.

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In 2007, whilst travelling from West Cornwall to an artist residency in the Northern Isles (Shetland), I stopped near Inverness with some great friends. One of them, Mandy, lent me her book Findings by Kathleen Jamie. Handing it to me she told me I should read it. It took me half of the book before it fully got into me. And it got me.

While I was doing my fine art Masters I was looking for books to see how writers tackled the subject of nature and landscape. I read Thoreau, Emerson plus other great writings but they were not what I was looking for. I wanted something to really resonate with my approach. Kathleen Jamie’s Findings led me on to discover The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd. The difference in these writers to the previous readings was what I was looking for. Less conquestorial, more about place and the poetics of it.

Cairngorm from the A9

The Living Mountain is a personal account of being in and knowing the Cairngorms. In the studio this week, listening to it this time around, it is sympathetically read with a voice which lulls one into the miracle and beauty of nature.

I quote The Living Mountain, Chapter 11 : The Senses

‘For the ear the most vital thing that can be listened to here is silence. To bend the ear to silence is to discover how seldom it is there. Always something moves. When the air is quite still, there is always running water, and up here that is a sound that one can hardly lose, though on many stony parts of the plateau one is above the water courses. But now and then comes an hour when the silence is all but absolute and listening to it one slips out of time.

Such a silence is not a mere negation of sound. It is like a new element and if water is still sounding with a low far off murmur, it is no more than last edge of an element we are leaving, as the last edge of land hangs on the mariners horizon. Such moments come in mist, or snow, or a summer night when it is too cool for the clouds of insects to be abroad, or a September dawn. In September dawns I hardly breathe. I am an image in a ball of glass. The world is suspended there and I in it. ‘

Passing the Eastern edge of the Cairngorms on the A9.

I have another friend, who now lives at the foot of Ben Nevis. She is a geologist and mountain guide to put it lightly. Her current job involves a walking commute to a very specific area of Nevis Range to monitor moss and grass. Her walk to work is 6 hours one way. She used to live in the Cairngorms and told me once that she doesn't get lost there, doesn't actually need a map and compass (although she’s got a heid enough to take one). She said, even in fog she knows every rock and can find her way.

Now this, is knowing a place.

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It is difficult to better the mountain and sea air and they are places that I have always been drawn towards.

All of these photos have been included because I have always really appreciated how both fog and snow rub out features (and sounds) in the landscape, altering distance and scale. Everything becoming visually simplified.

One of my favourite south-west Wales beaches local to us.

And yes, it is a secret!

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