Posts by Sara Barnes

Sara Barnes

Sara Barnes is a Staff Editor at My Modern Met, Manager of My Modern Met Store, and co-host of the My Modern Met Top Artist Podcast. As an illustrator and writer living in Seattle, she chronicles illustration, embroidery, and beyond through her blog Brown Paper Bag and Instagram @brwnpaperbag. She wrote a book about embroidery artist Sarah K. Benning titled "Embroidered Life" that was published by Chronicle Books in 2019. Sara is a graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art. She earned her BFA in Illustration in 2008 and MFA in Illustration Practice in 2013.
Photography
January 7, 2019

Photographer Uses Personal Experience to Visualize Years of Depression

Photographer Gabriel Isak finds solace in the notion of art imitating life. For years, it has helped him cope with depression. Using surreal photography ideas and a minimalist palette, Isak depicts solitary figures who often exist among blue and gray grandiose landscapes. Their backs are to the camera—or their faces are otherwise obscured—to symbolize the struggles faced in unconscious states of mind.

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Resources
January 1, 2019

5 Fun Drawing Challenges That’ll Help You Improve Your Sketching Skills

If you want to get better at drawing, there’s a simple way to do so. Just start drawing! You’re only going to improve with many hours of putting pen or pencil to paper. And in all this time spent sketching, one of the most important things you can do is make mistakes. It’s in these blunders that you truly understand how things look and ways to fix them.

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Sculpture
December 27, 2018

Amazing Engineer Transforms Ordinary Sheets of Paper into Tactile Tessellations

Artist Matthew Shlian transforms ordinary sheets of paper into incredible three-dimensional tessellations. Using a series of complex, repeating folds, Shlian’s paper sculptures take on a life of their own. Many feature spikes that jut from a flattened surface and the individual elements are positioned to move in giant waves across the entire piece. Previously, Shlian’s work was clad in a black-and-white color palette.

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Sculpture
December 19, 2018

Artist Turns Medieval Monsters from Illuminated Manuscripts into Colorful Piñatas

Contemporary artist Roberto Benavidez finds inspiration in imagery and literature from hundreds of years ago. Influenced by works like Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, he manages to fuse the famous source materials with elements that are significant to his own life. Benavidez grew up in rural southern Texas where the party piñata is commonplace. He uses the crepe paper creations as the basis for his sculptures.

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My Modern Met

Celebrating creativity and promoting a positive culture by spotlighting the best sides of humanity—from the lighthearted and fun to the thought-provoking and enlightening.