ARTS SCENE | By Bret Bradigan

Fiber & Graphic Artists Combine for Porch Gallery Show

Continuing their combination of unexpected artists, Porch Gallery will host “Towers & Walls: New Works By Sally England and China Adams.” The show will open Oct. 4 and run through Nov. 4. The opening reception is Saturday, Oct. 6 from 5 to 7 p.m. at the gallery, 310 East Matilija Street.

Porch Gallery co-owner Lisa Casoni said the exhibit came about “because we believed that China and Sally’s work would play well off of each other. The thick fiber material that Sally uses contrasts and compliments China’s works on paper and her graphic stark lines.

Conceptually, both artists have developed series that re-imagine giant man-made and natural structures. Sally’s fiber sculptures are inspired by the water towers that inhabited her midwestern childhood home while Adam’s rock wall series plays with the visible and hidden zones of Joshua Tree’s famous rock formations.

The Ojai Monthly and Ojai Hub reached out to Sally Adams, an established fiber artist and social media star with 22,000 Instagram followers. She lives in Ojai with her husband, working on commissions and teaching macramé at the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa’s Artists Cottage and involved with the Ojai Fiber Collective.

Ojai Monthly: Are you presenting all new work for this show? How many pieces and how long has this been in the works?

Sally England: I plan to have around seven brand-new pieces for the show. I’ve been noodling on this show for a long time, but wasn’t able to start the actual physical work until a just few months ago. Most of the time I am busy working on custom commissioned work for clients.

OM: Did you have any insights or reflections that were inspired as you were working on this show? Was there a theme or pattern that emerged?

SE: Most of the time I’m working on 2-D fiber wall hangings, and I just started making 3-D sculptural work last year. Now that I’ve had more time working in this way for the show I’ve realized how much I love it, and how much room there is for me to continue to explore this way of working in the future.

OM: Any new textiles you’re working with this time out? What textiles are you using?

SE: I like working with natural fibers the best. All of the work is literally made by hand, so soft materials are best on the skin and have a cozy appeal to them. For the show I am mostly using cotton rope and string. I use knotting techniques to create the structure of my sculptures.

OM: Ojai is becoming known for its fiber artists. Is there a lot of collaboration going on?

SE: I love that there is a strong fiber community here in Ojai. I am so grateful to call Carol Shaw-Sutton a friend and mentor, she is an encyclopedia of knowledge when it comes to fiber history and techniques and heads up the Ojai Fiber Collective which I am a part of. I am also so happy to have Cattywampus Crafts in town, which is such an excellent promoter of me and my work, as well as all things fiber.

OM: How did you meet (Porch Gallery co-owners) Lisa Casoni and Heather Stobo? How did the idea of the show come up?

SE: I met them initially at the gallery when I stopped in to see the Cassandra Jones show
OM: How closely are you working with China Adams? This is her second show at Porch, but I understand this is your first (though I think I recognized some of your work from an earlier joint exhibit). What’s that relationship look like? Lisa and Heather often do what appears to be unusual pairing that seem to find a harmony? Your thoughts?

SE: This is my first time showing at Porch. I first met China when I was being massaged by her during her last exhibit titled ‘Massage Generated Drawings.’ I was familiar with her work and felt honored when Heather and Lisa grouped us together. I think our work is really going to sing together for this exhibition.

This show feels like my Ojai debut in a way, because its my first time showing here in Ojai. Even though most of my work ends up going to Los Angeles or New York, it was important to me to have this show here and be involved with the local community.

OM: What impact does Ojai itself have on your work? The natural beauty, the artistic vibe, etc?

SE: The beauty of the Ojai Valley is therapeutic. I feel a sense of well-being here like I’ve never felt before, which allows me to be in a headspace where I feel creative and supported.

OM: You are blowing up on Instagram. Is that the destination of choice for visual artists? How did you build this following?

SE: Instagram itself is blowing up. It almost seems like nowadays as an artist people look at your Instagram page before your website. I love it because its a great tool for visual communicators like myself, and I wouldn’t have my career without the power of the internet, but at the same time its a love/hate relationship because its such an easy way to be distracted from reality.

OM: Anything else you can think of?

SE: I teach a beginning macramé class at The Artist Cottage at The Ojai Valley Inn every Monday afternoon, and it is open to the public 🙂

Heather Stobo concludes: “We hope that people will see that the structures that surround us often become so enmeshed into our visual environment we can take for granted their functional importance Respectively, vessels that hold and distribute diminishing water supplies and a giant barrier that naturally prohibits intruders; towers and walls have become symbols of political lighting rods in contemporary politics. 

“Most importantly, we want people to appreciate both artists interpretations of their exterior environments.”