I have been invited to show three works in The Biggs Museum of American Art’s juried exhibition, Visions & Voices highlighting the work of twenty regional African American artists of the Mid-Atlantic region.
Free Your Mind: Social Justice Public Art Installation
Free Your Mind is a collection of personal narratives. Participants are invited to share an personal experience with implicit bias to release this story from their personal narrative. Later, artist Theda Sandiford will weave these stories in the installations as computer generated voice recordings. Motion sensors trigger these recording in the installation of the tapestry.
Do you have left over materials from an art project? Have WAY too much Cadmium White when you need Pastels? Do you have skeins of yarn you are not using? Or supplies from an art practice you no longer use?
Come to Sky Garden Gallery’s Art Supply Swap with your items and trade, them for something else.
March 4, 2022, 5pm – 8pm Location: 150 Bay Street, Jersey City
Summit Public Art: The Baggage We Carry
Public Art Installation On View: May 2021 – May 2022
Location: Summit Village Green, 356 Broad Street Summit, NJ
Three Emotional Baggage Carts are on display for the next year. When the sun sets, the carts solarl panels light up and take on a new form, glowing from within.
This opening is a complimentary community event in conjunction with Dover’s Citywide Black History Month Celebration. Masks are required to be worn inside the museum; light refreshments will be served.
Pre-registration is free and strongly encouraged. Get your tickets HERE
Public Voice Award
One piece from Visions & Voices will be added to the Biggs’ permanent collection. You get to help us select the final work, I hope you pick mine. Members of the community will choose the artwork that the Biggs will purchase through a vote for the Public Voice Award. Visitors can vote in person through April 29.
Visions & VoicesExhibition Dates: February 4, 2022 – May 21, 2022
Do you have leftover materials from an art project? Have WAY too much Cadmium White when you need Pastels? Do you have skeins of yarn you are not using? Or supplies from an art practice you no longer use?
We’re on the lookout for art supplies that can be used by someone else. Marie Condo your art supplies and make room for more joy in your life.
Photo by Khaled Elbanna
Here is how it’s going down:
Start rummaging in your closet and pulling out supplies you want to get rid of.
Come to Sky Garden Gallery’s Art Supply Swap March 4, 2022, 5pm – 8pm 150 Bay Street, Jersey City, NJ PH9, 10th floor
with your items and trade, them for something else.
DM your Questions to @SkyGardenGallery or @MissTheda on Instagram
Feel free to contact me about specific items I am currently sourcing such as colored T shirts, sheets, fabric, rope, beads….
In 2020 my artist residency with NOW Friends in Nairobi Kenya was cancelled due to Covid.
I had spent 6 months preparing for this residency, learning Swahili, researching local artists, textiles, and beading techniques.
When I learned that travel would not be possible, I decided to use the time I would have been in Kenya to clean, drill and string thousands of bottle caps into larger-than-life strings of pearls and drape these necklaces on vintage ladders.
It is a wintery gray outside. So naturally, the colors of these recovered fibers is giving me of warm sunsets at the beach vibes. I can’t wait until I return to St. Croix USVI.
Im feeling inspired to make dresses for these vintage GI Joes and pose them for photographs with mini shopping carts as a collaborative project with Donna Bassin.
I have been invited to show three works in The Biggs Museum of American Art’s juried exhibition highlighting the work of regional African American artists of the Mid-Atlantic region.
I extended this work into a self-directed social justice art project, Free Your Mind. Participants are invited to write a statement about implicit bias or a microaggression they have experienced onto a ribbon and then tie the ribbon onto a net to remove this story from their personal narrative. Free Your Mind displayed at Bridge Art Gallery in Bayonne in September, ArtHouse Productions JCFriday at Art 150 in Jersey City and at a Miami Art Week pop up in December.
Imagine the healing possible if people released their trauma. I’m currently looking for other locations to share and collect story ribbons. You are also welcome to drop off any luggage on the virtual page, HERE.
I welcome your suggestions and contribution to this work.
I also delved deeply into my own emotional baggage triggered by racial trauma and created of a new body of work, weaving onto recovered shopping carts.
My Emotional Baggage Carts serve… to separate myself from the daily experience of microaggressions and create a new possibility for myself, free from these constraints.
Power Puff with Black Racing Stripes
So far, I have made 19 full size emotional baggage carts, exploring a range of emotions, triggers and impacts from invisibility to the expression of joy as an act of resistance. Given the challenges of moving around my fleet of shopping carts. I miniaturized the concept and have been making mini desktop emotional baggage carts. Get yours here.
As you can imagine, a fleet of emotional baggage carts can take up considerable space. They have taken over Sky Garden Gallery both inside and on the roof and my studio. And they have found temporary homes as public art installations in Summit NJ and NY Governors Island.
The public art installation of “The Baggage We Carry” features three emotional baggage carts on display in Summit NJ from April 2021-April 2022.
MoCADA house public art installation of the “Wide Load” emotional baggage cart was a favorite at Governors Island, NY this Summer. I also enjoyed a yearlong virtual solo show, Hidden in Plain Sight, at MoCADA in Brooklyn NY and look forward to the opening of the new museum space next year.
This Spring, I secured gallery representation with Ivy Brown Gallery and couldn’t be happier with the partnership and guidance she is giving me to curate my art career on my own terms. Thank you Ivy Brown.
I displayed my large scale weaving “You Are So Articulate” and lead a virtual artist talk at NJAA Revision & Respondat the Newark Museum of Art. Take a peek at the show catalog
I even hosted my city councilman, James Solomon at I am My Hair– yarn wrapping session during the first in person JC Friday open studio since the beginning of the pandemic.
Sunset Colors
James Solomon
I Am My Hair Cypher
And my “Ponytails and Door Knockers” rope sculptures were used in a collaborative dance work, People, Place, Disruption with NIMBUS, Jersey City performed at NJPAC and at Nimbus, Jersey City. I was completely blown away by the thoughtful use of my fiber work in this dance. Gorgeous.
This month during Miami Art Week, Free Your Mind collected microaggression story ribbons at Ed Varie’s Sunsets Party at The Standard. And my fiber rope work and Mind Over Matter emotional baggage cart were showcased with Ndr Nw Mgmt (Under New Management) at Untitled Art Fair.
