Sarah Meyers Brent’s friends tend to donate their used clothes to her, as if she were a branch of Goodwill. Not that she needs these garments to wear; instead, she uses them to construct complex sculptures in which their colors (faded to bright) and textures (smooth or fuzzy) add essential qualities to finished forms that can cascade down a wall like a waterfall, pooling on the floor, or wrap around a pole. Brent works in a high-ceilinged studio in an old manufacturing building in the Boston suburb of Waltham, Massachusetts. She grew up in Hadley, New York, a small town south of Saratoga Springs. She recalls that, as a child, “I always did drawing. One of my grandmothers made art, and I did it with her. I assumed that all my friends were doing it, too, but then I noticed they weren’t. I drew, made things out of clay, and painted a lot of people.” These pursuits continued through high school, after which she went to Skidmore College, not only because it is known for its arts programs and is near her hometown, but also “because it was free,” she says, “since both my parents worked there. My father taught in the biology department …see the entire article in the print version of May’s Sculpture magazine.
