Sarah Suru says, "I do love art. I kind of grew up with it so.... My greatest influence was my mom. She was doing it since I was little." Mrs. Mangold was Sarah's art teacher at Big Sandy High School. While at Boise State, she was required to take all kinds of art classes but found her love for sculpting metal while she was there. She went to Boise State to get a degree in Art metals. Diane Scalese encouraged her to concentrate on Metals. When she returned to Big Sandy, she worked under Jan? owner of Heirloom Jewelers in Havre. Sarah made a lot of beautiful jewelry but found it difficult to concentrate while on the details while working with small children.
One day she saw a lady making a rose out of leather on TV, and she thought, "I could do that!" And the rest is history. Sarah said, "I'm like doing the leather." Most of the leather is white, and she paints it to make it come alive like a flower. The flowers are pins so you can easily attach it.
Right now, she has eight pieces at Red Lodge that are going to Nashville this fall for a showing. She's excited to find out what happens there.
The flowers range from $35 for a single flower to a big crown that goes around a cowboy hat for about $500.
She uses beads for any flower as a center. Each flower is hand-formed and hand-colored.
She uses a tool with a different attachment that gets hot to form the different flowers.
"I never thought I would get into leatherwork." She has made Roses, Lilies, Poppies, Sunflowers, and a variety of little fill-in flowers. Each one she makes by hand.
Besides being an artist, Sarah and her husband Paul have two children Olivia, seven, and Bode, four.
