Born in Wisconsin and taught to sew and knit as a child, Sally Shore studied fine art at Kent State University in the late 1960s with a concentration in graphic design. She took a weaving class her last quarter before graduation.

Ms. Shore wove commissions for architects' and designers' clients while her son was small, and then owned a graphic design studio in the late 1970s. She began working with ribbons after receiving a gift--the book "Weaving with Ribbon" by Valerie Campbell-Harding--in 1992. Over the course of the last sixteen years, Ms. Shore has been experimenting with color, value, texture and weave structures, concentrating on tri-axial, or "mad" weave: An Asian basket making technique which can yield cubes, stars and many other optical illusions.

Artist Statement

Historically, ribbons have been used as trimmings - folded, pleated, stitched, gathered and wired - and woven together as decorative inserts on clothing and for blankets, pillows, book covers, hats and purses. Using ribbon in its endless variations to design evening bags and pieces for the wall allows me to experiment with plain weave, twill weave, basket weaves and many more by combining widths, textures and colors in layers much like a painter layers paint on a canvas.

For the past sixteen years I have been using ribbon as my raw material for the Asian basket weaving technique called anyam gila or the "mad weave." This tri-axial weave employs three elements and can produce a hexagonal pattern, a six-pointed star and a cube on a shelf. In exploring this weave I have discovered that dozens of visual tricks can be produced by varying the color and value of the ribbons and by using two or more ends as single elements. Supplementary ends are layered over the base weaving to enliven or subdue color and to reinforce or disguise the patterns inherent in the weave structure.