HELLO!
"I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be." ~Joan Didion
"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." ~Maya Angelou
Two of my favorite quotes that I oft butcher but always attribute. It's been a minute since I’ve updated the quixotic About Me page, and those two pieces of wisdom seemed an accurate way to kick it off.
I'm Sondra Primeaux and I'm a mom, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a creator, an idealist. These days, most of my ideas get backed up by some action but it wasn't until I quit drinking alcohol in 2014 that I can say that with conviction. I called it my #midlifesolution. It's not hyperbole to say that I've experienced some rapid transformation, but last year in particular, that has squared off with loads of self-acceptance. I've called myself in. I know the hills I'll die on.
Creatively, I've been a photographer and reuse designer and maker for over 20 years. I love the written word and have been known to lay down my own. I give F*cks, I really do, and I'm laser-focused on where I'm giving them. Helping women in midlife realize their dreams is one of them. Loving fashion in a responsible way is another.
If history has taught me anything, I'll kill it somedays, create chaos the rest. But these words are here to remind me: generosity and stewardship is my home base.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
The roots of my work all grow from the same source: Recovery. I recovered my spirit when I got sober in 2014. Recovery of my creativity fostered hundreds of conversations with other folks who did the same. I recover precious textiles, discarded yet beloved, that lends to recovery of the planet, however small, however audacious that claim may be. My writing recovers what I know to be true. My camera seeks to recover what I see. The limbs of this tree may seem like bedlam and wilderness but if you observe long enough, you will see that it’s still stretching into its unyielding resolve to be here, unrepentantly here.
CV
2023 - present, writer at Special, A Serial Memoir.
2021 - 2023, Community Manager of the Stitcherhood.
2019 - present, Austin Creative Reuse Board of Directors, Content Creator, Co-Producer of Reuse on the Runway
2018 - 2019, Coldtowne Theater, improv graduate.
2018 Your Daily Unruffled: 365 Days of Reflections and Prompts For Your Creativity and Recovery, author.
2017 - 2021, The Unruffled Podcast, co-host.
2017 - present, The Recovery Gals Art Exchange, co-founder.
2015 - present, The Unruffled, website creator.
2015 - 2017 Ruffled Sewing Camps for Kids, creator and teacher.
1997 Site of the Source, solo photography show. San Marcos Fine Arts Center, San Marcos, TX.
1992 Retracing Russell Lee’s Steps: A New Documentary, historian. Exhibited and archived at Texas State University, San Marcos.