Sara Goodman, textile artist
Anna Super
Saturday, November 22, 2008 8:18 AM
“I see fabric in my head,” textile artist Sara Goodman said.
Tucked in the woods in Lyme is Goodman’s textile studio where she creates fabrics through weaving, felting, stitching, and uses dyeing techniques from around the world. She will be auctioning off one of her scarfs at the “Fine Art, Fine Food” auction.
Goodman, who used to be a teacher, now runs her own textile school from her studio.
Her school is called “House of Dreams.” She has never done any advertising to draw her students to her school. Goodman’s students have found her through word of mouth, and through her involvement in the League of New Hampshire Crafters. The League is the one local place Upper Valley residents may have seen her work. A woman named Joan Morris teaches a workshop in shibori, which is a fabric dyeing technique, at Goodman’s school for five days once a year.
“There’s only six students and they work together for a week,” Goodman said.
Goodman’s interest in textiles came at a early age. When she was 16 in 1972 her brother had a friend that dropped out of college to travel the world. He would visit Goodman’s brother and would talk about the things he saw in the world and would have products from those locations. Goodman was intrigued.
“I started weaving in the 70s, in the 80s I tried to make a living out of it,” Goodman said.
At first she found that to be difficult, and worked in teaching for a number of years before her textile career blossomed. One style she creates is ikat, which is from the Island of Sumba and it is a type of weaving that uses what is called a resist dyeing system. Goodman also creates using shibori, which is a Japanses dyeing system where parts of the cloth are covered so the dye does not color it. Both the systems of dying are in the same catergory of western tie-dyeing methods.
“It was really hard for me when I left teaching to come up here and sit on this hill and be an artist,” Goodman said. She said she had always been political, and was happy when she found a way to embrace both.
Goodman has taken her love of textiles and the cultures across the world that embrace, even sometimes survive on the money they make by creating textiles, to improve life for these women. She is involved in the Rugmark Foundation, which is a world wide not-for-profit. Rugmark’s goal is to end, or reduce child labor in the carpet or rug industry. She said the organization is successfully having an impact.
“It straddles exactly what I am interested in. Textiles and education,” Goodman said.
Goodman is also involved in the organization WARP, Weave A Real Peace. When she opened her studio she saw an ad in one of her textile publications for the organization. She discovered the woman who started WARP, which works to improve the quality of life for textile creators in communities in need, taught Goodman weaving in the 1970s.
To learn more about Sara Goodman and her work go to www.saragoodmanfiberstudio.com/
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