Viva Lewes Issue #143 August 2018

THIS MONTH’S COVER ARTIST
This month’s cover was designed by Sarah Gamble, who uses
vintage objects and materials to create her collage pieces. “I’ve
always been a great collector,” she says, “so my house and
studio are filled with drawer upon drawer of sequentially arranged
objects, colours, papers. I love old toys that people have
discarded and boxed games, things that are a bit torn or distressed,
that have a bit of history to them. As much as I love the
collaging, I love the collecting.”
The compass design is made up of around twelve different
items: “it starts with a beer mat, then a record cover, then two
protractors, then a tiddly wink, then a cocktail stick, then a
cocktail stirrer and an electrical component that I found in
Maplin. I finished by cutting the letters from an arithmetic
book cover…” The objects were layered, glued on top of each
other and then scanned, with minimal digital manipulation:
“When I’m constructing something like this, I try to keep the
pieces as they are. I could have made the electronic piece a
bit bigger to fit, but I didn’t – the
whole thing is just as it is.” The Viva
masthead is made from a Vitality
lightbulb box from the 1960s, which
Sarah reluctantly ripped up to construct
the lettering. “It was the most
beautiful box!”
“A lot of my work is based on old
technology,” she continues. “Cameras,
radios, record players, computers
and typewriters – those are the
main themes that run through my
work. And I try to base my choice
of materials on the object I’m making.
So I’ve got camera manuals
from the 1950s and I’ve got some
old typewriter books with amazing
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