Sarah Moli Newton Applebaum (what a name!) creates meta-knitted sculptural installations that emphasize an overwhelming array color patterns using mostly knitted fabric and blankets. These bursting animated forms engulf and transform a space into a heavenly spectrum and in their geometric abstraction suggest a homey environment that you would only find in happy induced dreams. The costumes are inventive, creating imaginative and quirky characters that seem innocent enough to cuddle with but with a guarded stance that can be quite intimidating.

A few words from the artist about her interests, influences, and process:

“I’m really into crocheted/knit materials.  I use to go to thrift stores a lot and would always see these amazing psychedelic blankets for like 99 cents languishing in these bins.  They were so beautiful and so underappreciated.  A lot of women put a lot of time and love into those blankets.  I started buying crocheted blankets and scarves and hats and pillows and sewing them into these crazy large “metablankets” .  I also collect unfinished blankets and blanket pieces (granny squares) and reconfigure them.”

“What really attracted me to the blankets was not the knitting, although I appreciate the time and skill of it for sure.  I’m a terrible knitter myself.  It was the insane color combinations, some by choice and some by necessity, that really attracted me.  Particularly the junction between the psychedelic creativity of color choice and the “mundane-ness” of a…blanket. Above all else I’m interested in color.”

“Color is all we see and use to understand our surroundings.  And it is attached to so much feeling/emotion.  My work is very primary/primal.  I work with color, the tactile, archetypes of form and landscape, mythology. My process is intuitive and based in an exploration of anything that interests me in conjunction with an exploration of the materials I’m working with.  I really like to make things.”

Applebaum lives and works in San Francisco and currently has a show at Receiver Gallery in San Francisco. She also has a  show coming up in December at Pool Gallery in Berlin. She’ll have a piece at Mission17 in San Francisco and a collaborative piece at Ever Gold.