If you’ve been to a Spiderweb event at all this year, chances are you’ve already bumped in to the amazing SarahFriday, our featured artist this week. A brilliant performance artist, jewelry maker, puppeteer, creative director, fashion designer, and educator, Friday first stumbled into the web during a rather rowdy performance piece involving a mob of upset brides and a food fight at Spiderwed in May of 2016, and in her words, she “never looked back.”
Just this year, Friday took on the crucial role of assisting with the production of #PLEASED, one of the most ambitious things we’re EVER done, and she’s currently holding auditions for an upcoming production of her newest performance creation, Let’s Talk About Sex, which will run in early 2019 in collaboration with UNT’s Department of Communication Studies and your fave creative collective, Spiderweb Salon. Sarah is a part of so many aspects of what makes our little artist community great, including our On the Air project, where we record pieces by local writers and poets to share with DJs on the local radio station, KUZU!
Feast your eyes upon these galleries of gorgeous new work coming out of SarahFriday’s newest fashion design project and read a little bit about her concepts for the collections, what’s coming up next, and maybe get inspired to create something uniquely you. If you love it, follow her amazing Instagram account! You can find these works of art -- and so many others -- for sale at Friday’s Etsy shop and various markets around town, too.
From SarahFriday’s “Gothic” Collection, photos by Jordan Wright
Please, tell us all about these collections!
“These two particular excessory collections, Gothic vs. Baroque and Carnivalesque, were created in summer 2018. After months of designing what I considered more marketable excessories, I felt the need to produce a collection that allowed me to explore my creativity without the pressure of monetization.
Both the carnivalesque as well as gothic and baroque aesthetics allow me to design items that are both decadent and excessive; qualities I am found of in design especially when worn by womxn and queer bodies. While the two collections vary in aesthetic, I produced them both with the shared vision of designing from found objects, emphasizing form and not function. All of the materials used in this collection are found, upcycled, and recycled. The collections not only display excess, but serve as inspiration for womxn and queer bodied people who desire to be excessive, take up space, and make their presence known to do so.”
If you could give other artists one piece of advice, what would it be?
“The advice I would give comes from advice given to me recently by my lovely friend, Angela. She said of art and creation, that when you, as an artist, are bogged down by whether or not something you create is profitable you have to remember that "people want you", not the art you create because you know it can sell. You, as an artist creating authentically, are worth celebrating and worth supporting. Don't feel you have to sell out your vision to create something marketable that doesn't speak to you.”
Starting this October, Friday will be taking a metal working class with the Craft Guild of Dallas to enhance her excessory collection and production skills. She’s also one of the selected participants for Spiderweb Salon’s first-ever jewelry making workshop next month with local artist and Spiderfriend Brett Wallace. It looks like there’s a lot on the horizon for our friend Friday!
“I’m at a point in design now where I am mostly assembling from found objects. I make quite a few alterations when designing currently, including drilling holes, filing metal, and bonding things together, but I don’t currently do any soldering, casting, or polishing. I will learn all of these skills in the metal works courses I’ll be taking this fall, and look forward to how I can utilize them to create more complex and decadent looks. Agnieszka Osipa is a huge inspiration of mine and I would love to try and create costumes and metal work to the caliber she does. I have a long way to go, but she’s definitely the bar.”
SarahFriday, photo by GRIT Images Co.
Sarah is a performance artist and designer whose work centers around intersectional feminist issues utilizing the body as the primary means of expression and critique. Sarah received her M.A. from the University of North Texas in 2016 with an emphasis in Performance Studies. Since then, she has expanded her performance work to include community activist work, most notably leading the Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas’ effort to evolve their practices and policies to better serve lgbtq+ identified kids. In addition to her performance art and activist work, Sarah works as what she titles an "excessory" designer utilizing found materials to create wearable art. To check out her work visit her Instagram page @_friday.designs_.