Sarah Ward
Sarah Ward is an Essex based hand weaver most known for her woven checks, stripes, contemporary Ikats and colour stories as The Aviary Studio, and also more recently for her work as Lark & Bower, which focuses on off-loom artworks, painstakingly woven with needle and thread, using waste yarn discarded by UK textile mills.
Sarah showcases her work via weavers collective The Experimental Weave Lab, and also teaches workshops in both on-loom and off-loom weaving.
As a climate and environmental activist, the main focus of Sarah’s work is to share knowledge through craft. She uses her woven work to advocate weaving as an art form in its own right, but also to raise awareness about waste, and the textile industry’s impact on our planet and its inhabitants.
The idea of ‘off-loom’ weaving was conceived during the first pandemic lockdown in 2020, when Sarah didn't have access to her loom or studio. Desperate to weave, she started using leftover yarn and a needle and thread to make small studies of woven structures; twill, herringbone, houndstooth, hopsack.
Now, despite having access to both studio and loom, she has continued to work on these small, slow offerings, whilst pondering why woven structure isn’t more celebrated.
‘Hand-weaving is an often forgotten art, and one which deserves to be appreciated without necessarily being part of a functional or 'throw away' item.
As an ancient craft, weaving is deeply connected to what it is to be a human. Like music, weaving developed in many parts of the world simultaneously, long before civilisations had communication with one another - an idea often forgotten in our new digital and industrial world.
My pieces are born not just out of love for weaving but also out of concern for the way in which the textile industry has been shaped in recent years by the fast fashion mentality, and how that impacts our planet and our future. I intend to use these pieces as a way to raise awareness about that.’