While Sheetal Seth celebrated her work at the one-day exhibition “Unstitched: A Celebration of the Saree” on March 29 at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, her personal love for experimental textiles is a lifelong journey.

Since moving from India to California in 1995, Seth has always carried her mother’s artistic influence through working with sarees.

“I’ve been trained in fine arts as a kid. This is important because my mom was the one who got me interested in art, so she’s the main inspiration,” Seth said. “She would send me to these art classes when I was in school. I still have those drawing books and refer to those notes.”

Sarees are a piece of traditional Indian culture characterized by long pieces of unstitched cloth draped along the body and often worn for formal events. They have since become a medium for Indian artists to sketch, paint, stitch and embroider their artwork onto. These silk garments are often woven and worked on for months before the artists finally share them.

During her schooling in India, Seth majored in textile design at Delhi University. What began as a formal background in fine arts and textile design eventually evolved into her specialty in dyeing and creating art on sarees.

Seth’s saree was one among over 30 others featured, painting a complex and colorful picture of Indian culture. The stories stitched within her pieces are bright and hopeful, created with the intention to move people from all walks of life.

Entitled “Generations: Tree of Life,” Seth’s saree features three faces bleeding into each other, surrounded by vivid floral detailing. The top face, inspired by Seth’s mother, is adorned with a bun, red kumkum bindi and nose ornament. The second face represents Seth herself. Their faces are conjoined with striking white jasmine flowers, representing Seth’s own journey from India.

“How generations are made or developed depends on your environment. Tree of life means the things around us that give us our personalities,” Seth said. “My mom’s personality is intertwined with mine, and then it connects to my daughter.”

Seth and her daughter’s faces are accompanied by a California poppy and monarch butterflies in memento to their shared belonging to California. The face representing her daughter is colored blue, inspired by the motion of the Ganges river.

“Young adults, they come and be part of your life for a little bit, but they want that independence also,” Seth said. “They come, they go back, come and go, like an ebb and flow.”

Much like Seth draws inspiration from her own mother, her daughter, Kanika Seth, is another major player in her artistic development and inspiration.

“I think my mom really wanted me to be artistic. I would go to all these art classes, but I didn’t really tap into it when I was younger,” Kanika Seth said. “Recently I started looking into my own way of expressing creativity through crocheting. I’m not good at drawing and painting, so that’s the way I express my mom’s artistic side with my science-oriented brain.”

While Kanika Seth may not have followed her mother’s artistic route, she was still included and able to support her mother in the development of her saree. Together they brainstormed the idea to highlight the immigrant experience and journey, while still holding onto familial roots.

Seth’s piece and all the other displays featured during the one-day exhibition belong to a nonprofit organization, Lara Lakshmi, run by Vara Ramakrishnan, a fellow artist and executive director of the Asian Art Museum.

“I love sarees so much,” Ramakrishnan said. “I’ve had my favorite artists all my life, and now I have connections with all these artists.”

All pieces that are part of the Lara Lakshmi organization, including Seth’s, will be up for sale on May 16. The rest of the details will be up on their website.

Seth was thankful to be one of the many artists included in the exhibit, and especially grateful to Ramakrishnan.

“It’s huge, it is one in a lifetime. I’m very thankful to Vara because she got me involved in this,” Seth said. “This is San Francisco. Nothing can be better than this; it ties me to who I am deep down. I am Asian. I’m from India, but I’m also American.”

This story was originally published on GoldenGateXpress on April 9, 2026.