Sarah Kerley

For as long as I can remember, I have been making enormous messes. Over the years, I have poured myself into gaining the skills to yield an intentional result out of the bits and pieces of many such messes. My grandmother was an artist, and everything I know about watercolor I learned from her in between swimming lessons and playing dress up. I learned to sew in the 4th grade, and it quickly became the bread and butter of my craft repertoire. In high school I had the unique opportunity to design and build sets for our theater department, fell in love with set design, and it became my first college major. I eventually chose to study ceramics and fibers and earned my Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tennessee Tech University's Appalachian Center for Craft. in college, I had the opportunity to expand my knowledge in the realm of fibers through weaving my own usable fabric to make one-of-a-kind sewn art and functional good. Drawing and painting is something I enjoy doing, but it is a labor of love. Creating three-dimensional forms, on the other hand, has always seemed to spring forth from me with great ease. I strive for both two and three dimensions to coexist among my work, recently in the areas of embroidering, quilting, hand-dyeing fabric, and assembling collages with my fabric drawings, and found objects. I have always drawn my aesthetic inspiration from nature around me and I hope that my work serves as a reminder of the intentional design in creation around us all. I still clean up lots of messes, more than ever as a mom of two kids, but I am enjoying making time for art. I hope you can enjoy it too.