Artist Amanda Browder has returned to the Sioux City Art Center to resume her “Razzle Dazzle” project, a massive textile sculpture that will be suspended from different areas of the art center’s buildings in August.
Browder is back to lead a new series of “Sewing Days” throughout the metro area during the month of March.
“Even since I’ve been gone and then came back, we’ve gotten fabric donations, people came in and helped sort fabric, or sewing some fabric at home,” Browder says. “We’ve got this whole system that’s really slow but sure but happening.”
The Sewing Days are events during which volunteers spend time pinning together long stripes of similarly colored fabrics and then sew them together. She says no previous experience with textiles or sewing is required for the project that will debut just before Artsplash this summer.
“People come and donate fabric, spend some time pinning or sewing if they feel like it,” she says. “They’ll be able to go to the piece during Artsplash and point to it and say, ‘I made that, that’s my piece,’ and I want that to happen. It should be their piece. They should take ownership of this art piece and be like, ‘This is for my town. I participated. I live here. Here’s my representation.'”
Browder says they could use more colorful fabric. “We’re still looking for donations. That’s the thing. We need cotton fabric that’s saturated in color, patterns or solids are totally fine,” Browder says. “I recommend staying away from pale colors and white and tan because when we look outside, we already see those colors on buildings and so we’re trying to recreate this building into a colorful explosion.”
More Sewing Day locations are being added continually to the art center’s website.
(By Woody Gottburg, KSCJ, Sioux City)