SARITA WESTRUP IS AN ARTIST AND CONTEMPORARY BASKET WEAVER ORIGINALLY FROM THE RIO GRANDE VALLEY OF SOUTH TEXAS. THROUGH THE USE OF MIXED MEDIA AND WOVEN SCULPTURAL FORMS, HER WORK EXPLORES THEMES OF TENSION, MOVEMENT AND CONTAINMENT, JOINED AND PERMEABLE SPACE, AND THE BI-CULTURAL AESTHETICS OF HER HOME. HER ARTWORK IS EXHIBITED NATIONALLY AND IS PUBLISHED IN AMERICAN CRAFT AND SURFACE DESIGN JOURNAL.
Sarita is a craft based artist and art educator of mixed Mexican descent living in Dallas, TX. Rooted in weaving techniques and bricolage, her sculptural basketry works are inspired by where she was born and raised, the Rio Grande Valley on the Texas - Mexico border. She received her MFA in Fiber arts from the University of North Texas in 2012. Most recently her work has been shown in "Materials Hards and Soft" at Greater Denton Arts Council in Denton, TX and in "Staked Out" at Blue Spiral 1 Gallery in Asheville, North Carolina. This past summer she was accepted into the 2022 American Craft Council Emerging Artists Cohort receiving a $10,000 accelerator grant. This summer of 2023 she will be teaching sculptural basket techniques at Penland School of Craft in North Carolina and the National Basketry Organization Conference in Tacoma, Washington.
contact: sgwestrup@gmail.com
STATEMENT
My recent body of work translates my experiences crossing international checkpoints by car and by foot into woven tunnel-like forms and paintings. I am inspired by the Rio Grande Valley of the South Texas-Mexico borderlands, where I was born and raised. I use basketry, to emphasize tension and reflect on the social and political strain prevalent along the border region, marked by its walls and fencing. I combine metal and reed twining techniques with cement to transform the domestic basket into a representation of movement. The forms are woven, joined, mudded, painted, and rubbed with graphite and often reference drawing. My work is concerned with themes of migration, containment, joined and permeable space intuitively informed by the impact of border politics.