Melanie Lieb

Paint, Fiber, Sculpture 

and more

Melanie Lieb works in any medium she can get her hands on that expresses a particular idea appropriately.

She uses oils, watercolor, pen and ink, fiber, ceramic, copper enamel and silver to make paintings, sculptures, jewelry and installations that express her memories, emotions and curiosities.

She calls her work a visual diary. “I create for the same reason that most people eat or sleep.” Without art, she fears she would be unable to function. “My artwork is the release of parts of my soul,” she says. “It is the way I let out steam.”

Lieb’s painting and sculpture is fascinated with nostalgia and human psychology, “what moves people and makes them think.” Her jewelry is more concerned with physical processes and the drive to constantly push herself to learn new materials and techniques.

Her plan for the near future is to continue this process of creating, and to find new venues to let others enter my world through my work: showing in other cities around the world be a dream come true for me.”

Though her life in Spokane is playing a part in her current ideas and explorations, she doesn’t feel her work is specific to one place. “The art happens wherever I happen to be,” she says. “It does not have borders.”

Lieb is a member of Saranac Art Projects in Spokane; her next exhibition there will be in June. View her work online at www.zhibit.org/Melanielieb.

Sarita Morgan

Owner of Sarita Star Designs

Sarita Morgan’s sewing machine touches everything she makes, whether it’s her leather goods, fabric, or painting.

Her greatest artistic motivation and desire is to create wearable art that is beautiful, unique, and useful. The process and the results are “essential to being authentic to myself,” she says.

Morgan grew up in a small town in the Southwest and draws a lot of inspiration from that area, but also loves blending that with inspiration from the Northwest, finding the similarities in the two places that revisit iconic images from the past. “I love that I have found a ‘little big town’ that provides the opportunity for my business to grow without feeling like I have to live in a big city.”

Morgan’s father is sculptor who is absolutely meticulous in his renderings of life. His work instilled in her a sense of quality and a desire for perfection from the earliest age. She cuts and sews every single feather of her jewelry and every bag individually, striving for straight clean cuts and perfect thread lines every time.

In the near term she is expanding her line of bags and working to get her jeweltry into more stores, working toward a point and place where she has time “to work on art for art’s sake.” In particular, she wants “to mix my leather work with wood and paint,” she says. “I’ve had ideas for awhile about how I would bring that to life.”

You can find Sarita’s work locally at Fringe & Fray and Lucky Vintage and on etsy at saritastardesigns.etsy.com. Follow her on instagram @saritastardesigns and search “Sarita Star Designs” on Facebook.