Conceptual Materials Social Practice Artist
Inspired by the lush vegetation found on my rainforest property, I wove single-use bottle caps into vines and flowers to reflects the vibrant colors and intricate patterns of vines, orchids, Heliconias, and Birds of Paradise that surround me.
Now on display at Fiberart International 2025 through August 30 2025 at Brew House Arts; 711 S 21st Pittsburgh, PA.
The Rootstick Tide Wands began under the luminous gaze of the Strawberry Moon. That night, I placed my selenite out to charge under the moonlight. By morning, I felt an undeniable pull—like the materials themselves were asking to be gathered. Driftwood and discarded spatulas. Feathers, coral, bones. Beads and buttons waiting to be strung. I listened. I followed the current. And I began to make.
These wands are not ornamental. They are ritual tools—conduits for renewal, rebirth, and release. Each one is wrapped with intention and woven from the thresholds between land and sea, spirit and body, memory and motion.
Reading The Way of the Eight Winds by Nigel Pennick helped me name what I was already feeling: that each wand aligns with directional energies. North for stillness. East for new breath. South for fire and transformation. West for the tides we release into. These elemental currents are embedded in every fiber, shell, and knot.
The tarot’s Eight of Wands captures the same urgency I felt while making them—swift movement, decisive action, a rush of spiritual momentum. These are wands for those standing at a threshold. For those who know it’s time to let go, call something in, or begin again.
Each wand holds charged selenite and moonlight. Each wand is a spell. A signal. A tether to the unseen forces moving us forward.
If you feel called, trust the pull. The wind doesn’t wait.
Rhapsody Wrapped in Blues began with a question from a child.
During my January residency with the Miami Children’s Museum, one young visitor asked if we could use pipe cleaners on the cart. That moment of curiosity stayed with me. There was something so tender in the request—something playful, intuitive, and wise. It cracked open a new way of thinking about material, and I began wrapping the child-sized shopping cart with pipe cleaners soon after.
The color palette, however, was already whispering to me—shaped by the books I’d been reading, each a meditation on memory, grief, and the enduring presence of Black life.
Imani Perry’s Black in Blues reminded me that blue is more than a color; it’s a carrier of ancestral sorrow and sonic resistance. In Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake, I found language for the feeling of constantly living with the residue of catastrophe—of mourning that doesn’t end. That wake lives in the soft textures of the faux fur, the tangle of pipe cleaners, the miles of ribbon.
Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother haunted my hands as I wrapped each bar of the cart. I imagined the women she walked with, the ruptures she named. Judith Carney’s In the Shadow of Slavery reminded me of the sacred knowledge carried through seeds and roots. These readings weren’t just research—they were spirit guides.
I also carried the wisdom of Braiding Sweetgrass—Robin Wall Kimmerer’s call for reciprocal relationship with the natural world—and Tiya Miles’ All That She Carried, which taught me how an object can become a vessel for remembrance when language fails.
Together, these stories, these materials, and that one child’s question converged.
Rhapsody Wrapped in Blues is a power object disguised in softness. A rolling vessel. A visual blues ballad made from pipe cleaners, pom poms, faux fur, and 12 yards of ribbon. It holds the weight of what we carry—from the microaggressions we’re taught to swallow, to the ancestral griefs that linger in our DNA.
It’s playful. It’s painful. It’s both.
Because sometimes healing begins when we let a child’s question guide us toward our own.
What’s Now & What’s Next with Theda Sandiford
June 20 – August 30, 2025
Brew House Arts, Pittsburgh, PA
Work on view: Polyurethane Paradise: Rainforest Rhapsody
Size: 79 x 12 x 72 in
Medium: Woven bottlecap vines on blue and white polyurethane rope and paracord, draped on a rolling Z rack
Inspired by the lush vegetation of my rainforest home in St. Croix, this piece transforms discarded bottle caps into flowering vines—evoking the tangled beauty of orchids, heliconias, and Birds of Paradise. It’s a meditation on plastic, color, and reclamation.
October 17, 2025 – January 10, 2026
Visions Museum of Textile Art, San Diego, CA
Festival Days: October 17–18
Next up: Blackity Black Blanket, Ladders travels to California.
Part of a larger zip tie installation that covers a full studio apartment in over 500,000 handwoven strands, this work transforms ladders into bristling, burdened monuments of aspiration. Wrapped in dense armor, they symbolize the weight of implicit bias and the tension of trying to rise while being held down.
These blankets aren’t cozy—they’re confrontation. They resist softness. They hold the sting of microaggressions and reclaim the materials of containment into shields of truth and visibility.
More updates soon from the studio and the garden. Stay tuned, and thank you for walking this journey with me.
—Theda
As we reach the midpoint of the year, I’ve been reflecting on how structure and intention are keeping me balanced amid the whirlwind of making, exhibiting, and traveling.
With Fiberart International 2025 now open in Pittsburgh—where Polyurethane Paradise: Rainforest Rhapsody is on view—and upcoming work headed to Interpretations 2025 in San Diego, the pace is full. Add to that ongoing work at Sky Garden STX, new writing projects, and my research around Provision Grounds, and it would be easy to feel stretched thin. But staying organized has made all the difference.
Lately, my planner has become a trusted studio assistant—helping me map out deadlines, break larger tasks into bite-sized actions, and track how far I’ve come. Whether prepping materials for an installation or scheduling studio time between trips, that clarity has helped me focus on one thing at a time without drowning in the big picture.
Travel also brings fresh energy into the studio. I often return from residencies or exhibitions with new ideas percolating—some that shift my original plans. I’ve learned to build in flexibility so I can respond when a piece wants to grow in an unexpected direction. Organization, for me, isn’t about control—it’s about creating space for creativity to breathe.
June reminded me that structure and discipline aren’t barriers; they’re a foundation. They allow me to honor the work, trust the process, and move forward with intention—even when life gets busy.
Here’s to the next half of the year—grounded, growing, and full of possibility.
I’m fascinated by the use of felted hair mats to clean up oil spills—how something as intimate and personal as human hair can so effectively absorb environmental damage. There’s a quiet poetry in that gesture of care and restoration.
Friends,
If you received a strange message from my Instagram recently asking you to “vote for me on Spotify”—please know, that wasn’t me.
My account was hacked and out of my control for three days. I deeply apologize for any confusion or inconvenience this caused. And for the record: there’s no such thing as voting on Spotify. I would never send a mass message like that. If I had a real personal ask, I’d send a text or make an old-fashioned phone call—especially if we haven’t spoken in a while.
The experience was frustrating and unsettling, but thankfully I’ve regained access and tightened my security settings.
Please stay vigilant—if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.
With gratitude and a side of cyber caution,
Theda
This work bears witness to the unseen threads that connect the past, present, and future—an exploration of memory, magic, and spiritual protection, all woven into the fabric of life itself. Using marine debris collected from beaches in the aftermath of hurricanes, alongside conjure bags and objects such as locs of my hair, beads, shells, and my Dad’s old hearing aid batteries, I’ve created a sacred vessel to bridge the realms of the living and the dead.
Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World reframes how we see the green world around us—not as passive, cultivated objects, but as active participants in shaping our desires. It’s a perspective that lingers long after the last page, especially here in St. Croix, where the land hums with quiet intelligence.
Pollan’s invitation to view plants as co-creators made me reconsider the medicinal herbs growing wild across my property. Guinea hen weed curling through the underbrush. Lemongrass swaying in the trade winds. Turmeric pushing up in my raised planters. These plants aren’t just there. They arrive, they signal, they speak—if we’re willing to listen.
What if these plants are already in conversation with us, guiding us to notice where balance is needed, where healing is overdue?
Since reading the book, I’ve begun to move more slowly through the land, letting my hands hover before touching, asking inwardly before harvesting. I’m starting to feel that these plants are not just medicine for the body, but memory-keepers, storytellers, and perhaps, old friends with lessons still unfolding.
In St. Croix, where ecological wisdom is hiding in plain sight, The Botany of Desire offers a gentle challenge: to listen more deeply, to be in relationship, not just use.
What might change if we all listened like the plants do—rooted, attentive, and open to what the land is trying to say?
Since losing my father this past Thanksgiving, I’ve been leaning more heavily on the quiet practice that has grounded me for decades: journaling. I’ve kept journals and scrapbooks since childhood, but it was reading The Artist’s Way in the ’90s that made writing a consistent part of my creative and emotional life.
These pages are where I process—ideas, emotions, memories, the mundane, the magical. After I finish a piece of art, I often return to what I was writing during its making. In those margins, glimmers emerge. Little phrases. Sensory echoes. Emotions I couldn’t name at the time. And from there, poems begin to form.
Until now, I’ve kept most of these poems to myself. They’ve always felt deeply personal—like offerings only meant for the page. But recently, I was encouraged to begin sharing them, not just as a part of my grieving process, but as an extension of my artistic one.
So here goes.
I’ll be sharing select poems in the weeks ahead—tender words that trace the undercurrents of loss, memory, and healing. They live between fiber and feeling, just like my art.
