Spotlight on Sara Felix
Sara Felix is a Hugo Award winning mixed media artist who creates with inks, acrylics, resin and sometimes clay. She is an editor for the Hugo Award winning fanzine Journey Planet and has been also nominated for her work for the past few years. She has designed two Hugo Award bases, one with Vincent Villafranca in 2018 and one on her own in 2016, and has created four Lodestar Awards. Sara is the president of ASFA, the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists.
Every week Sara creates a tiara for ‘‘Tiara Tuesdays’’ and has been doing this since the beginning of the pandemic, creating over 200 tiaras, including four giveaway tiaras for Glasgow 2024. In her misspent youth she was on a number of shows on HGTV related to crafting including Crafters Coast to Coast where she made ridiculous flying pigs.
Tell us a bit about the techniques you use for your galactic-themed alcohol ink and acrylic canvases.
I started seriously working with alcohol inks about five years ago. I took a class by a local artist that really got me hooked. I quickly realized the medium had so much potential that I couldn’t stop creating. The colors are so vibrant especially when still drying that my mind went directly to space art.
There are quite a few layers to my pieces of space art. From acrylics to inks and back to acrylics again.With the inks it is all about the mixing of colors and separation of pigments. You need a sealed surface. Then it is a lot of blowing ink around with a straw or an airbrush and watching the ink dry to see its interaction with other inks or isopropyl alcohol. Inks put on top of dried inks will reactivate which can cause some pretty spectacular color shifts. Once I have a background I like then it is time to use the more dense versions of the inks. Ones with pigments or that are more opaque sit on the surface, create interesting accents to the more flowing transparent inks below. At that point I add acrylics for accent. Whether that means lines of acrylic ink to represent trails of color, interference blue halos around the colors, to acrylic white for the stars, they all help to unify the final art.
There is such a science to inks as a medium which is what attracts me to them. If you ever did the chromatography experiment in school, you take a sharpie and alcohol or water and watch what colors come out as the ink separates into the original pigments. With alcohol inks sometimes the colors are surprising- blacks separate into pinks and greens depending on the ink, purples into blues and red.
The main thing about it is letting go and experimenting. The inks have a mind of their own and I love to see where they take me. I allow the ink to be at the forefront of the process and have now added in other mediums from resists, gold leaf, gelli prints and resin and continue to experiment with other techniques. There is a joy and playfulness that I get from allowing myself the grace to let go of the control of the piece.
You’ve done a lot of in-community art from Hugo bases to Glasgow Worldcon’s logo! Talk a bit about your graphic design work.
I have been working on conventions since 1999 when I worked at a science fiction and mystery bookstore here in Austin and Willie Siros took me to my first Armadillocon.My background in conrunning has always been layout and design in promotions and publications. I have done logo work for Armadillocon, a World Fantasy or two, Dublin 2019, Glasgow 2024, the upcoming LA in 2026 bid, Texas in 2031 bid, as well as Reconnect – Eastercon in Belfast. I like making things look good and creating branding for a convention and art direction is actually quite fun for me. I have designed two Hugo Awards, four Lodestar Awards, and various other special committee awards for Worldcon. One of my interests is promoting fantastical art, and I think it is a very important part of a convention to celebrate this amazing field of artists. Talking to other fan artists I have seen a drop in including fan art in convention publications and I try to add as much art as I can to promote other artists. At Dublin and now Glasgow we will be producing Art and Artistry which is a celebration of the visual art of the convention, both the art we created to promote the convention, and art that will be there at the con.
Of course we all love Tiara Tuesday! Tell us more about your tiaras and jewelry.
The first tiara was made from pipe cleaners and feather butterflies and now over 200 tiaras later it is labradorite and filigree. It was amazing how much people enjoyed the tiaras during lockdown. Every week I post them to Concellation, a fb group that touts itself as the SF&F con that’s always canceled, and I got people who said that they looked forward to Tuesday and it was a bright star during such a scary time.
I got better at constructing them and do workshops at the cons I attend as well as a few online. My jewelry has evolved like the rest of my art. From bright colors and shrink plastic to more of a steampunk feel it was a way to have a piece of art you can wear.
Is there something about what you do as an artist working in the SF/F field, or an upcoming project, that you’d like to tell our readers about?
My biggest goal right now is to bring joy to the community through art. Whether it is mine or someone else’s I want to share art whether that is with my role in publications for Glasgow, the weekly Tiara Tuesday, the Chesley awards for ASFA, or creating fan art for conventions where I am a guest. As for specific projects I am a guest of honor at Constellation and then I will be gearing up for Glasgow. ASFA has 20 artists signed up to show art on the ASFA panels in the Glasgow art show which is fun as it is generally artists who do not show at a Worldcon.
Cover and interview design by Francesca Myman, art by Sara Felix
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