Meet Sara Ra” Perez | Embroidery Artist & Costumer”

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sara “Ra” Perez and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sara “Ra”, maybe we can start at the very start – the idea – how did you come up with the idea for your business?
I have always been a maker in some way or another, and I started embroidering as a way of coping with my anxiety. I loved that it was transportable, that it can be done almost anywhere. The pieces just sort of began to pile up, so I started Ra Makes and started selling embroidery pieces. Market after market people were asking me to teach classes, we connected over my pieces and our struggles with anxiety. So, I started teaching classes. Historically women have spent time in community making clothes, sewing, quilting and embroidering, it was a safe space for them and this is what I wanted my classes to be for people.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

I’ve always been fascinated with people’s stories, with how people got where they are, how many things had to happen all for us just to walk past each other, what windows and mirrors exist in our respective stories, what we might learn from each other and how that has the potential to build community. I think this is why I’ve found myself in a creative field, working as a fiber artist, embroider to be specific, and a customer.

Fiber arts has historically been seen as women’s work and so dismissed as not “real art” and so it has been a space occupied mostly by women. Sewing circles have been their churches, mending meetings where they comforted each other and built community, telling the stories of the communities on quilts, and hatching plans to smash and subvert the patriarchy. I love that a medium that can be as simple as a piece of fabric, thread and a needle can help build community, advocate for marginalized communities’, take the shape of a loved one’s writing, remind you of something your grandmother might have made or just swear a lot. My hope is that my embroidery work helps make someone feel seen, that they find themselves in my embroidery class and find stillness in the stitching.

Since fiber arts have such a deep history and have been common pastimes for people I am able to find a lot of supplies second hand. Sifting through estate sales and sometimes finishing someone else’s work, finding thread at thrift stores, using fabric from costumes or getting supplies at Scraplanta. Granted not all of my supplies are second hand but about half are. Working with second hand materials is a sort of two fold joy for me, I love the idea of producing less waste and that the materials had a whole life before me and they will have a new life with me.

I studied fashion design in college and at some point realized I didn’t want to be designing t-shirts to be mass produced and end up in a land fill…. which left thinking …well shit, what now? I realized that I had a knack for understanding people, and coming alongside them in their storytelling. See, we can use clothing as a tool, not only to keep our skin safe or shield us from the elements but help us feel brave, strong, sexy, comforted, or like a whole different person. It can be used as armor, help us blend in in different situations or help to create a new persona so we can pretend to be that character at the dinner party and hide our social anxiety. I realized that this was basically costuming in a nutshell, and that with the intentionality of dance and theater costumes (and the tight budgets) meant that clothing would be reused and not just tossed aside.

Since I started my creative life in a dance studio and learning to tell stories through movement. I noticed that costumes were often the last thing a choreographer thought about, but the first thing that the audience sees. This is the moment where my love of making people feel seen and stories come together.  There’s a skill in understanding how a dancer needs to move in their costume, how vulnerable they can feel on stage and the importance of feeling confident in their costuming can change that. As the dancers work to tell the choreographer’s story, costuming completes the picture the audience sees.  I remember there was the one piece I costumed where it was a few women giving different monologues they had written and one woman, we will call her T, T’s story was about how she never felt Black enough or white enough in spaces…. so when I picked out fabric for her costume I made sure to pick something with stripes that had shades of grey and black… T welled up when I gave her her costume and explained why she got that print.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?

I moved to Atlanta right before the pandemic so my view of the city is much different than people who have been here before the pandemic.

My favorite spots:
Chai Panni’s lunch buffet, the East Palisades Bamboo Forest hike followed by a stop at a Korean +BBQ fusion restaurant that’s attached to a gas station that of course I can’t remember the name of.

Breakfast at either Folk Art or Sun in my Belly, followed by a stroll through the shelves at Charis and a walk through Decatur cemetery to visit my favorite headstone that reads “she hath done what she could”,  maybe hit up some estate sales around Atlanta and maybe take a class at Garage Door Studio in Avondale.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?

In my life I have been quite fortunate to have some incredible mentors, friends and community surrounding me. I was first shaped by the community at Riverside Community College Dance Department, the teachers there taught me how to be an artist, how to have conversations about work I was viewing and had begun to create. Mark Hanes, Rita Chenoweth and Sofia Carreras helped me figure out who I was as an artist and later in life they helped me come back to myself. Now that I am teaching I see them in my work, how their classes all those years ago helped shape me into the educator I am today.

At Columbia College Chicago I found myself in Julie Felher-Render’s sewing class. Since then Julie has been my teacher, my employer, my encourager, my partner in making, my supporter and my friend. Julie is unfailingly kind, brave, creative, brilliant, an excellent problem solver and the best human anyone could have in their corner. So many parts of me and my work have been shaped by our friendship and conversations together.

Website: ramakes.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ra.makes/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ramakeshere