About the Artist

Verysweetlife is the art practice of Sarah Kate Beaumont, an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York and Pittsburgh, PA. Beaumont’s work offers an alternative perspective to consumer culture, drawing attention to its assumptions and presenting a new way to consider our relationship with ourselves, others and what we own. Questions of sustainability and ethics are addressed in her work through whimsy and grace coupled with urgency and powerful conviction.  Her writing, photography and wardrobe design merge into a dynamic exploration of acquisition, stewardship and relationships within a shared ecosystem. Beaumont derives energy from the urban environment with the belief it presents both great challenges and solutions to over-consumption. The artist seeks to empower her audience to explore individual aesthetics in a collaborative space. Through her work we recognize the tools of self-reliance are within our grasp.

One facet of this exploration is Beaumont's Slow Style project (2008-present). For the duration of this project the artist has opted out of buying clothing. She has instead designed an entire wardrobe, making virtually everything she wears from lingerie to hats. Slow Style delves deep into craftsmanship and embraces the ethos of makerism. The practice of mending is integral to this work. Extending her project into the community, Beaumont has opened her studio for ‘Mending Basket,’ a series of informal gatherings to which the public is invited to bring garments in need of mending and learn the skills to restore them. At the heart of her work is an exploration of the individually made vs. the mass-produced. She has made a series of videos titled ‘The Conscientious Consumer’ which offer insights about how to evaluate the quality of textile goods before making a purchase. She is also currently writing a book on the subject. Slow Style is a meditation on sustainability in an era of consumerism and advocates for a contemplative approach to individual style as a buffer against the omnipresent thrust of manufactured trends.

Beaumont began her artistic career as a professional photographer and traveled with an eye on quotidian routines in a variety of cultures. When digital imagery replaced film she gravitated towards fabric and thread, another analog practice.

Beaumont lectures nationally about the ethos of Slow Style. She served as an organizing member and resident master seamstress of Fixer’s Collective, an improvisational repair collective, and the Director of Innovative Programming at Arts Gowanus in Brooklyn, New York before relocating to Pittsburgh. Beaumont attended Bryn Mawr College and enrolled in the Masters in Education program at Bank Street College. She studied millinery techniques at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. As an educator, Beaumont taught Art in New York City public and private high schools for a decade and ran a sewing school for children and adults in her Brooklyn design studio from 2008 through 2014.

Her work has been exhibited at Ground Floor Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Proteus Gowanus (Brooklyn, NY), The Secret City (New York, NY), and during both the Brooklyn Museum and Gowanus Open Studios. It has been featured in such publications as The New York Times, Yes! Magazine, Ultimo Segundo (Brazil), El Naciòn (Argentina), Bloomberg Businessweek, and profiled in Elizabeth Cline’s book 'Overdressed: The High Cost of Cheap Fashion' (Penguin Portfolio, 2012) and the 'Routledge Handbook of Sustainability and Fashion' (Routledge, 2015).