Art at BTI – Color Is A Beautiful Thing: Intersections of Plants and Popular Culture

Art at BTI presents: Color Is A Beautiful Thing: Intersections of Plants and Popular Culture

by Sarah Gotowka

Space is limited, please register here.

Join us for a night of art and science. View the art of Sarah Gotowka, local fiber artist, engage with her at a reception and hear a presentation by Sarah and BTI’s Georg Jander.

Through the juxtaposition of plant-based materials and lyrics from pop songs, this exhibition explores the roller coaster of romantic relationships. The dry-pressing of flower petals reflects the struggle to preserve the fleeting moments of falling in love, while the natural dyes of handwoven fiber speaks to the ever changing seasons and currents between two people.

“How will I know if you really love me?” and “I would die for you,” are not only homages to two of the artists favorite singers, but are ephemeral words then materialized into statements of longing and despair. Sarah has been writing and drawing song lyrics since a young girl, obsessed with making RnB mixtapes. Today, the act of gluing, cutting and weaving stands as a mode of catharsis.

Sarah Gotowka

Sarah Gotowka is a visual artist currently living in Trumansburg. She is adopted Korean-Polish-Italian-American, and grew up in the suburbs of Rochester where she obsessively made mix tapes from 90’s radio airplay and built makeshift forts in the woods. (These factors alone have influenced her art practice immensely.) She received her BFA from The Cleveland Institute of Art majoring in Fiber and Material Studies in 2007, and graduated with an MFA from Concordia University’s Fiber and Material Practices in 2013.

Sarah helped found The Color Collective, an initiative to grow sustainable dyes in Montréal without the interference of machines or chemical fertilizers. This collaboration led to the instruction of many workshops at the Concordia University Greenhouse and Montréal Center for Contemporary Textiles, as well as exhibitions at the Textile Museum of Canada, the International Symposium & Exhibition on Natural Dyes in LaRochelle, France, and at the 13th Biennial Symposium of The Textile Society of America in Washington DC.

After receiving her MFA she moved back to upstate New York and has collaborated with Cornell, Ithaca College, The Craftstitute, New Roots Charter School and The Johnson Museum of Art, giving various workshops on natural dye plants and textile practices. She has also received grants from The Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County, and is currently teaching private weaving lessons. Her dream is to open a non-toxic textile school in Ithaca!

To learn more about Sarah’s work, visit her website and her studio‘s website.

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