Counting rice evokes repetition, patience, devotion, and ancestral memory. It’s both meditative and meticulous—a task sometimes used to test sanity or teach discipline, but also to slow down time.
What the Cart Carries
I shop abandoned carts the way some people browse thrift stores—curious, reverent, searching for forgotten truths. Left behind in alleyways, wedged between dumpsters, ghosted near bus stops—these carts speak. They are quiet monuments to lives interrupted.
Each one begins as a portrait of absence. Bent wheels. Rusted frames. Sometimes discarded trash still clings to the grating. Sometimes, only the echo of the person who once claimed it remains. These objects evoke more than loss—they testify. To displacement. To a time when we moved through stores with baskets in hand. To survival in plain sight.
They remind me of the stateless. The unhoused. The invisible laborers who build our cities and are swept away like dust. Each cart in my Emotional Baggage Cart series becomes a ritual of witnessing. I dress them in what we carry: zip ties, frayed rope, yarn, beads. Remnants upon remnants upon remnants.
They transform—into portals. Shrines. Evidence. Sculptures of grit and possibility. Through each cart, I ask:
Whose burdens are we pretending not to see?
Grass Is Not Greener
40 x 21 x 39 in
2022
Grass Is Not Greener
40 x 21 x 39 in
2022
Grass Is Not Greener
40 x 21 x 39 in
Gold painted recovered shopping cart with a bicycle bell, paracord, zip tie blanket, LED strobe light, batterie operated LED star lights and basket woven with marine line, fabric and paracord.
2022
Free Your Mind at The Future Belongs to the Loving
I’m honored and excited to share that my interactive installation Free Your Mind will be featured in the upcoming exhibition The Future Belongs to the Loving, on view from May 3 through July 31, 2025 at MAPSpace, located at 6 N Pearl St, 4th Floor, Port Chester, NY.
This show could not be more timely—or more necessary.
Opening Day is May 3rd, and it promises to be a vibrant, full-day celebration of collective creativity, healing, and resistance through the power of art. From morning coffee and community connection to workshops, performances, and living sculpture, the day will be brimming with opportunities to engage, reflect, and rejoice.
Exhibition + Opening Day Details:
May 3, 2025 | 🕚 11am – 7pm
MAPSpace, 6 N Pearl St 4th Floor, Port Chester, NY
Visit MAPSpace
Collaborative Events Schedule:
- 11:00–11:30 AM – Coffee + Welcome Remarks
- 11:30–12:30 PM – Sound Bath Workshop with Serena Buschi
- 1:00–5:00 PM – Rotating Presentations with Theda Sandiford (that’s me!), Natlaya Khorover, and Michael Sylvan Robinson
- 5:00 PM – Performance by Ms Muscle
- 5:00–7:00 PM – Living Sculpture with Amy Keefer
About Free Your Mind
Free Your Mind invites viewers and participants alike to confront and release the weight of microaggressions—those subtle, often unintentional moments that carry very real emotional impact.
This piece provides a space of craftivist healing. Participants inscribe the microaggressions they’ve experienced on colorful ribbons, tying them onto the installation and quite literally freeing them from the confines of personal silence. As the work grows, it becomes an evolving, visible, communal record of disempowering interactions—open for reflection, conversation, and, ideally, transformation.
This work lives at the intersection of artivism and collective care, and I’m honored to share it alongside fellow artists who are also committed to joy, activism, and connection through creative expression.
The Future Belongs to the Loving asks: How do we create loving, resilient communities in a world that feels increasingly fragmented and fragile? I believe we begin by telling the truth, creating together, and holding space for each other—and that’s exactly what this show is about.
Come out, connect, and contribute. I can’t wait to see you there.
With love and intention,
Theda
Offering to the Lost Ones
Offering to the Lost Ones
Theda Sandiford
42x10x5”
Recovered marine line, sea tumbled, woven and knotted with eyelash yarn, acrylic yarn , deconstructed line, glass beads, shells, chain and hand made bells.
2024
Offering to the Lost Ones is a sacred beacon of remembrance, crafted to honor the spirits lost during the transatlantic slave trade while reflecting on humanity’s ongoing disruption of the natural world. Using recovered marine line, sea-tumbled and woven with eyelash yarn, acrylic yarn, deconstructed line, glass beads, shells, chains, and handmade bells, this work becomes a poignant bridge between memory and materiality, life and loss.
The materials themselves—objects shaped by the violence of tropical storms and hurricanes—carry dual histories. They embody the enduring impact of environmental devastation and echo the turbulent seas that bore witness to unimaginable human suffering. Each knot, bead, and bell in this piece holds space for reflection, transforming debris into a solemn offering to the lost ones whose names and stories dissolved into the depths of the Atlantic.
This work evokes the fractured journey of the Middle Passage, where bodies cast into an ocean that became both a witness and a grave. The fragile interplay of synthetic and organic elements—chains and bells against shells and glass—mirrors the tension between bondage and liberation, death and resilience.
Offering to the Lost Ones calls us to remember the past while confronting the present. It reminds us that the sea, a vast expanse of life and mystery, carries both the weight of ancestral grief and the scars of modern neglect. In this offering, I seek not only to mourn but to inspire a dialogue about healing and reconciliation— between humanity and the natural world.
Passport Ready: Italy, Here I Come!
This April, I’m heading to Italy with our parish for Jubilee 2025, and I am beyond excited. This trip feels like the perfect blend of culture, history, language, and adventure—right up my alley.
The itinerary is packed with iconic stops—Pompeii, the Colosseum, Trevi Fountain—you know, the kind of places you’ve seen in books and movies your whole life. To finally stand in those spaces and take it all in? I can’t wait.
What I’m really looking forward to is soaking up everything. The rhythm of Italian life, the art tucked inside ancient churches, the texture of the frescoes, the sound of fountains in little piazzas, the golden light on old stone buildings—it’s a full-body experience I’m hungry for.
Speaking of hungry… let’s talk about the food. I plan to eat and drink my way through this trip with pure joy: fresh pasta, flaky pastries, pizza, espresso, local vino, and anything else delicious that crosses my path. I want to sit at tiny tables, take a sip, and just be.
Since November, I’ve been studying Italian, slowly but surely. It’s been so rewarding to learn the language, even just the basics. I can’t wait to try it out my Duolingo Italian—ordering food, asking for directions, saying hello and thank you. Even fumbling through it is part of the fun.
This trip is a chance to reconnect with my inner explorer—to wander, to notice, to be curious. I’m going with open eyes, a notebook, a big appetite, and a heart ready for whatever magic Italy decides to offer.
So yes—I’m counting the days. Jubilee 2025, Roman ruins, ancient art, and new adventures? Yes, please.
Blackity Black Blanket Library Drape Invited to FIBER 2025
I’m honored to share that Blackity Black Blanket Library Drape has been invited to exhibit at FIBER 2025, a prestigious international contemporary fiber art exhibition. The show runs from May 10 – June 19, 2025, at Silvermine Galleries in New Canaan, Connecticut. If you’re in the area, I invite you to the Opening Reception on May 17.
This body of work holds deep meaning for me. It explores the often unspoken terrain of implicit bias and the exhaustion that can come from navigating unproductive conversations around “isms”—racism, sexism, classism, and more. These dialogues can often feel circular or emotionally draining, especially when participants aren’t fully self-aware or willing to acknowledge the biases they carry. And let’s be real—implicit bias is a universal experience. It’s not a moral failure. But how we respond to it—that’s the real work.
Each zip tie in this installation is a micro-marker, a fragment of memory and tension, a moment where something was said, done, or left unsaid. The 12,000–15,000 zip ties that make up each blanket aren’t just numbers. They are reminders of the daily weight of microaggressions—small, often invisible cuts that compound over time.
The piece is anchored by two 8-foot antique library ladders, their rungs obscured by cascading black zip tie blankets. These ladders symbolize ambition and ascension—but weighed down, they speak to the difficulty of rising when systemic bias clings to every step.
Blackity Black Blanket Library Drape asks: What are we carrying? And what do we ask others to carry, often without even noticing? This work doesn’t claim to have answers, but it insists on holding the question in view, and hopefully opens a door toward deeper awareness, mutual accountability, and healing.
If you’re in or around Connecticut this spring, come see the work in person. Stand beneath it. Feel the texture of the conversation it invites..
FIBER 2025
Exhibition Dates: May 10 – June 19, 2025
Opening Reception: May 17, 2025
Location: Silvermine Galleries, 1037 Silvermine Rd, New Canaan, CT 06840
April: Finding Inspiration in Nature and Culture
This month, I’ve been drawing deeply from the land and its stories for inspiration. Spending time in the Provision Grounds and food forest, I’m reminded of how nature and culture are intertwined. Each plant, from the vibrant cassava leaves to the medicinal herbs, carries a history—an untold story of survival and resilience.
This connection to the land has been feeding into my creative work. I’ve been experimenting with textures and colors inspired by the landscapes around me. The greens of new growth, the earthy tones of the soil, and the rhythmic patterns of woven baskets are finding their way into my current projects.
April has also been a time for storytelling. I’ve been gathering notes for the Provision Grounds Book, speaking with local elders and historians who’ve generously shared their knowledge. Their stories remind me how important it is to preserve these legacies—not just in words but through the art I create.
By looking closely at what’s around me, I’m finding endless inspiration for new ideas and perspectives. Nature has a way of grounding us, showing us that creativity isn’t something we need to force; it’s already present if we slow down enough to see it.
I’m obsessed
With these floral garland videos flooding my feed. Many of these plants grow in my own garden. The possibilities are endless
Krishna Reddy Viscosity Printing Demo
As I am setting up the new studio with a printmaking area, this video is providing food for thought for upcoming studio experiments.
Mark Johnson, former graduate student of Krishna Reddy’s and long-time collaborator, as he explains the viscosity printing process while printing from Reddy’s Clown Dissolving plate.
Plant Dyes and Moonlight
I’m taking notes and checking the Moon Phase calendar