About Sara
Sara Lowes is a textile artist whose practice explores sustainable textile traditions across cultures and generations, and how these techniques can be reimagined to transform discarded fabrics into contemporary textiles that hold stories of memory, identity and connection. Taking the form of quilts, garments, costume, and textile hangings, her work gives new life to overlooked materials. Through slow making and skilled handcraft, she creates pieces that honour the histories embedded within cloth while weaving new connections between people, place, and tradition.
“some of my earliest memories are tied to the landscape of the Maasai Mara”…
Throughout my life, I've collected swatches of textile fragments, my way of recording the tapestry of my own story. Growing up in Kenya, some of my earliest memories are tied to the landscape of the Maasai Mara. I remember evenings around the fire, sharing food with Maasai communities, and the beauty of their traditional shúkà cloth - the bold colours, against the landscape, the texture and pattern of the fabric, the scent of smoke carried within it. Those memories stayed with me, shaping an early awareness of textiles as something deeply connected to identity, land, storytelling, and belonging.”
“I’m drawn to the beauty of things that might otherwise be overlooked.”
Textiles have forever brought my world to life. They have held me through childhood imaginings and life transitions, and taught me the wisdom of distant places. They showed me that objects are never just objects ~ they are memory made tangible, connection made visible.
In a time when textiles have become increasingly disposable, I feel driven to bring their stories back into view. Cloth begins in the earth: it’s grown, spun, dyed, worn, repaired, and passed on. It carries traces of lives and holds many stories.
I’m drawn to the beauty of things that might otherwise be overlooked. To place a frame around them and ask: what could this become? How might it be mended, re-purposed, transformed into something beautiful and meaningful? How can we give it a new life and extend it’s story?
“For me, making is an act of care “
For me, making is an act of care — for cloth, for the earth, for one another, and for the custodians of the skills, knowledge, and stories passed down through generations and cultures. It’s about the connections that emerge, the bridges that are formed, and the deeper understanding and mutual respect that can grow when we create something meaningful and beautiful together.
Contact Sara
