SallyPrangleyStudio

I have drawn, painted, and created mixed-media art all my life and am largely self-taught. I minored in art history at Northwestern University and received an MBA in marketing from the George Washington University. I live in my hometown of Seattle after many years on the east coast.

Wire and paper— two materials I can’t get enough of! The wire serves as my outline, the paper as my illustration, filling in the details within the wire shapes. The titles of my artwork hint at the concepts behind them, most often life experiences, puns, or simply things I love. I use wire as fine as thread to as thick as rope. As for paper, if my scissors can cut it, I’ll use it. I appreciate the process of taking tightly coiled wire on a spool and combining it with flat paper and transforming these materials into unexpected 3-dimensional objects.

I blend traditional basketry, wirework techniques, and paper sculpture techniques to create my artwork. All work is done by hand, freeform, using only wire, paper, glue, and any other materials included in the design, most often found objects.

The approach I take is surprisingly similar between baskets, sculpture, and jewelry. They all involve wire: seen, as in a woven basket base or jewelry findings; and hidden, to provide structure, as in inside the walls/under the paper of a basket, or around the perimeter of jewelry components, also hidden under paper. My favorite wire to work with is dark annealed steel because it is strong yet still has the flexibility I need to make the shapes in my artwork.