Artist Spotlight - Sara Myers
Katie Jarvis talked with sculptor Sara Myers about her studio, work, and life in this extended interview
‘Tell me about your studio,’ I say to sculptor Sara Myers, as we chat over the phone. So she tells me…
She tells me about the red of this huge Georgian warehouse, where the first bricks were laid before troops had even left the shores to fight bellicose Napoleon. Where, nowadays, artists and garage mechanics; gyms and florists have replaced the engineers of His Majesty’s Royal Ordnance who once repaired cannon and musket here.
She speaks of high arches and towering ceilings; of the pleasure even of the approach: ‘There’s a canal; there are ducks with their ducklings, and swans. Often, at sunset, I’ll walk around and watch the sun reflecting off the water; and the light coming from the people who are still there in the dark… the light coming from these huge, beautiful windows. So even that is magical. I am charmed by this place.’ So charmed, she only ever locks the door and walks away with reluctance.
It’s not actually the space, lovely as it is. Or not just the space: ‘It’s something about going deeper and connecting with ideas about what your call is; who you are. And that’s what happens when you’re in your creative zone.
‘When I was younger, my partner at the time wanted to travel; and I was a really difficult person to take travelling. It’s not because I don’t get that other places are interesting. I find them fascinating. But I always thought — well, this could be studio-time.’
She laughs.
And then I laugh when she tells me — a little later in our conversation — that she admires wordsmiths.
Because here she is building brick by brick for me a Georgian space full of beauty and light; as evocative as any artwork. Connecting present to past, just as her sculptures weave connections between people; ideas; nature; memories…
The world, with all its wonders.
I love that Sara Myers can pinpoint the exact moment she became a sculptor. As a child, she enjoyed sport — always active — and science: measuring and testing the world through maths and physics.
But, aged 16, the almost-requisite teenage existential crisis turned her head in a different direction.
‘I felt I needed something deeper.’ Philosophy? Psychology? ‘Neither hit the spot.’
So she embarked on a foundation course in art, not quite knowing where it — or she — was going. Painting, drawing, printing, graphic design…
And two weeks of sculpture. The brief: to carve a self-portrait.
‘It was the middle of winter and I was carving this mask out of a breezeblock. I was told I couldn’t do it inside: too much dust and too much noise. I’d have to do it outside.’
Easier said than done.
‘There was snow on the ground — it was gruelling; freezing cold — and I had to sit with the thing in between my feet, carving. I was in a yard; snow was still falling. It was getting dark, and I could only see because of light from the building.
‘And I was just giggling.
‘There were bubbles of joy coming up from me. I was thinking: I want to do this for the rest of my life.’
Frameworks — Sara’s most recent solo exhibition — took place in the Turrill Sculpture Garden, Oxford. Browse through online images and you’ll see faces with expressions so perfectly captured, you’ll feel they’re about to morph and flex, even as you (intellectually) know they’re objects frozen.
The human condition.
Its flaws and tragedies.
Echoes of myth, history; spirituality, communication, relationships.
Simply amazing — love the flow and the consciously unfinished the work expresses! somebody has commented on Instagram.
Beautiful work, and I love Akhenaten, my fav Pharaoh! says another.
Somebody else has simply posted a heart.
Does Sara look at the world differently from the way I do? Its shapes and forms and structures?
‘I think everyone sees things slightly differently. I remember walking down a street for a project I was doing. There were four of us, including a surveyor. At the end of the street, which we all found interesting, we all mentioned completely different things! It was like we’d walked down four different streets!’
What did Sara notice?
‘A sculpture on one of the walls. Maybe a Gill; I was having thoughts about that and the context: him and his life. A whole series of things that ricocheted from it. You only see the sculpture when you look up; you can completely miss it, as they did.
‘I think there’s access to creativity that everyone can have; it will just be different for different people.’
So what is she — Sara Myers — saying about the world she sees?
‘In Frameworks, I was looking at how we see through eyes that are laden with ideas: what we’ve taken on from society; from our own culture. All of these are framing what we see.
‘And, within that, how we navigate through to any kind of truth.
‘So I play with some of these ideas. I express things a lot through figures because of the emotion, and understanding, and connection you can have with another human being using the figure, or using that as part of an element of anything you’re going to say.’
We also asked our head of art, Lizet Dingemans, about her experience with sculpture ..
From my perspective as an artist working primarily in oils, sculpture is useful for a multitude of reasons even as a beginner, or an experienced artist in oils.
First of all, sculpting increases our understanding of the human form. As artists working on paper, we are usually concerned primarily with the 2d expression of form. Sculpting allows you to literally feel it out from every angle, helping you visualise the portrait better when you come back to drawing and painting.
Sculpture is also a great introduction to anatomy, as we need to study the form in order to sculpt it, rather than be guided by just shapes in oil painting or drawing, for example. Sculpting can really be a spring board to understanding the different planes of the face and how they interlock.
Finally, for those trying to break into a job in the creative industries, it can lead to other Art Industry related professions that are in demand, such as stonemasonry, film props and set structures, or more specific work for places such as Madame Tussauds.
She reaches out and catches the fleeting moment: micro expressions which tell you — without you really knowing why — that people are feeling shy, anxious, troubled, amused.
Sometimes, Sara does portraits, ‘And it’s very important for me to have something essential of the person coming through.’
She’s just finished one with a depth of humour and generosity: ‘He’s been through a lot of pain and you can see that. But he’s got a deep kindness. So how do you get that?
‘That is crucial in a portrait. I have to include everything that has that and nothing that doesn’t. We all have mobile faces so, if that’s what I want to say, that’s what I need to include.’
Sometimes it will be in the eyes; maybe the mouth. Perhaps some other nuance, ephemeral yet essential. ‘It’s not always crystal clear, but you listen to that quiet voice that has something important to say.’
After an intensive three-year sculpture course at the City & Guilds of London Art School (which was hiding in not-so-plain sight: ‘I went round every college in London, trying to find a place I could work from the figure. At that time, it was ex-60s, post-modern tutors; no one was interested in the figure’), she still felt she needed more.
So she followed some drawings.
All the way to New York.
They were Randy Mellick’s work; he taught a master’s at the New York Academy of Art. Sara enrolled. ‘It was insane. But he was probably the best draughtsman I’ve ever come across.’
Insane, yes. Because ‘broke’ doesn’t begin to describe it…
Often, she wouldn’t know where her bed would be for the night.
‘The worst place I ever stayed was called the Banana Bungalow. I was ill with a chest infection so not in the best frame of mind; I needed to sleep. There was a really rank bathroom where the door didn’t close and the light didn’t work.’
At 11pm, she was turfed out of her room — it was wanted for somebody else; (just what she didn’t need) — into a mixed dorm. She fell asleep listening to the others talk about a rat running across a bed the night before.
‘This was the lowest point.’
Moonlighting — making prototypes for Warner Bros (very high-spec Tweetie Pies and Tasmanian Devils for merchandise) — improved her living conditions.
And a job at a health food café kept her fed. ‘I got my vegetable juice habit from there.’
The reluctant traveller has travelled.
Taiwan, for example: a three-year stint when the children were young.
‘There’s something really beautiful about the Chinese culture. A kind of community; openness; a live-and-let-live thing. Although there’s a very strong hierarchy within their social system, there’s also lots of patience and kindness.’
When her children played up, the locals wouldn’t blink: ‘If the kids were being loud or difficult, or one was upset, [the response would be]: Don’t worry; they’re just being children! I remember being in an airport with my kids and a bunch of Chinese teenagers began playing with them.’
She taught undergraduates at the university there — and glimpsed another, fascinating side to that culture.
‘My students would all come to me and say: What do you want?
‘And I’d say: Well, what do you want? What do you think about that? What do you find interesting? What do you like about that?’
The culture of obedience, albeit less restrictive than on mainland China, meant conversations about personal preferences were rare.
Yet, says Sara, free-thinking and creativity infuse every aspect of your being…
‘How you live, communicate and take in the world. If the world is a wonder and you can create, there are no limits.’
So I can tell you that Sara Myers works in clay, cast, wax, plaster; sometimes very different elements, such as machine parts.
And that she searches for what she wants to create — amongst human frailties, spirituality, philosophy, history, myth and nature; communication and engagement.
And that she seeks, and finds, the elusive.
The glint in the grass that sunlight strikes?
‘Yes — or things that really charm you. So you walk along and, I don’t know, the wind picks up a leaf and it does a little dance because it’s twirling around. Something catches: and it’s because it’s you in that environment and it’s a connection.’
• Sara Myers is teaching a three-day sculpture workshop at Raw Umber Studios, from Wednesday, 18 June to Friday, 20 June, 2025. You‘ll produce a life-sized bust, from life, under the Sara’s guidance: both the perfect introduction to sculpting with clay and a great way to continue to develop skills
• For more on Sara, visit https://www.saramyers.co.uk
