Bar Harbor Woman Returns to MDI with Textile Art Show at the Gilley
SOUTHWEST HARBOR— Sarah Matthewson is coming home to Mount Desert Island, stitching together her past and present with Memory Flies Home at the Wendell Gilley Museum, the first museum exhibition of her textile art.
Matthewson, the daughter of multimedia artist Carol Shutt and ceramic artist Rocky Mann, was born and raised in Bar Harbor among, as she says “deep red blueberry barrens, granite cliff beaches and pine-draped mountains. She now lives in England with her spouse and two children.
“When I was a child,” she says, “there was a birdfeeder outside our dining room window, white and forest green with a deer antler for a perch. Every morning I would watch as a riot of birds took their turn at the seed: Gold and purple finch, nuthatches, chickadees; constant evening grosbeaks and the rare rosebreasted one, all fought for their space. In the winter snow would cover the feeder and only the chickadees and nuthatches would remain, but when Spring warmed theearth, the birds would return. In this show I’ve been able to explore these birds of my past as well as the beautiful landscapes of Acadia.”
Memory Flies Home includes bird portraits that Mathewson created using an embroidery method known as “silkshading” or “thread painting,” a technique in which thread is worked in parallel lines, using each stitch like thin strokes of a very fine paintbrush. The artist uses both the color of the thread as well as its direction and angle to achieve the desired effect. The show also includes Maine landscapes made from found fabrics using a quilting technique known as English Paper Piecing, a patchwork quilting technique that involves folding fabric over pre-cut paper pieces and then using a whipstitch to fasten the edges together.
She first learned embroidery from her grandmother, and quilting from her mother. From that start, she developed a love of fabric and the memories it can carry. Matthewson is fascinated by how fabric — simple thread and fibers — can be molded and manipulated to tell a story. “I hope when people look at these pieces they feel the warmth of fabric and thread and how it can hold and capture memories,” she says. “I also hope they think about how the cloth they are wearing now; what memories it might hold and how might those memories might be preserved when the edges start to fray.”
Matthewson continues to practice traditional and altered sewing techniques, searching for new ways to express the lost landscapes of her childhood memories and to capture and create memories of her new home in England. “Birds fly south for the winter and then they return, carrying with them the past as well as a promise of the future, a reminder of the many things in life that are cyclical. I like to think of myself like this, gathering up scraps of fabric as I travel through life and carrying them home into my own tapestry of memories, each flash of color or pattern a reminder of where it came from, the hands that touched it and the lives it witnessed.”
Memory Flies Home will be at the Gilley from Aug. 12 through Nov. 1. On Wednesday, Aug. 13, there will be a special artist’s reception for Matthewson and her work from 5:30 to 7 p.m. There is no charge to attend but reservations are requested at www.wendellgilleymuseum.org/calendar so the Museum can plan for the correct number of attendees.