Sasha Sykes is a sculptural artist and creator of highly unusual hand-crafted contemporary furniture. Born in Dublin in 1976, Sasha studied Architecture and worked as a Retail Designer before setting up design company ‘farm21’. In 2002 she established her solo artistic career, working all over the world including London New York and now Carlow where she lives with her husband and three young children and works from a strawbale studio next door. Her work is particularly known for its use of acrylics and hand-cast resins, embedding found objects and collected organic materials, which tell stories of our landscape and social history. My work is primarily influenced by the scale, approach and aesthetic of the Irish landscape. I like to explore the cycle of life and decay, and the dichotomy of fragility and preservation. I am particularly interested in mankind’s relationship with our surroundings, and expressing the nature of that interaction is central to my work. I like to work with unusual organic and locally found materials that tell intimate stories about the physical locality and expose man’s interaction with the natural habitat Sasha has work in numerous private and public collections including the National Museum of Ireland.