My piece, “Lady Whistledown” chosen by juror, Margaret M. O’Reilly, the Executive Director and Curator of Fine Art at the New Jersey State Museum., in the upcoming exhibit 2022 New Jersey Arts Annual: Reemergence.
This open call invited a range of artistic practices and media to explore the theme Reemergence.
The opening reception is Thursday, June 16 , 6:30- 8:30pm
2022 New Jersey Arts Annual: Reemergence will be on view from June 18, 2022 through April 30, 2023.
Location: New Jersey State Museum; 205 West State Street Trenton NJ
On April 30th, 2022, the world unites in celebration of sculpture during the 8th annual International Sculpture Day!
Sky Garden Gallery invites you to play with Theda Sandiford’s Emotional Baggage Carts. Interact with the cart and leave behind any emotional baggage you are carrying.
Power Puff with Black Racing Stripes
Power Puff, Black Racing Stripe Baggage Cart
Theda Sandiford
Bike reflectors, paracord, Fresh Direct bag yarn, doggie poop bags, plastic newspaper bags and plastic grocery bags woven on gold spray painted recovered shopping cart.
36 x 40 x 24 in
2021
Joy is a form of resistance.
We all carry emotional baggage Naturally; these manifests differently for each of us. Some of us push shopping carts of pain and bitterness while some of us just have a backpack. I carry a lifetime of racial trauma.
Being alive means having the capacity to carry past experiences and learn from them. But there’s a point when this baggage becomes too much. Carrying too much emotional baggage can literally stop us from being open to new experiences, intimacy and growth.
How we choose to handle our baggage makes a difference. We have the choice to let it define us or to let it go and move forward.
Vintage silk ties and leather belts, paracord, black zip ties & ribbon, LED strip lights, mesh on recycled commercial fishing net and gold spray paint on recovered shopping cart
I am so sorry to have to cancel the opening of our rooftop garden to visitors today. The plants are planted but with this slow to start Spring the plants are not splendiferous yet.
I also have an opening in New Canaan CT, and I’m trying to swing by Art House Productions’ Snowball gala tonight.
I promise to open the garden and emotional baggage cart display for frolicing later this Summer when the lavender is blooming.
International Sculpture Day is being celebrated on Governors Island today. My emotional baggage cart “Donda Donda Deluxe” in honor of Kanye West’s relationship with his Mother Dr. Donda West is on display all Summer at Art Crawl Harlem’s house 406b. Stop in and take a photo.
I have two Emotional Baggage Carts included in this Online Exhibition Juried by Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy
About the Exhibition: The artists whose works are assembled all take the mantle of exploring the potential of multiple mediums at once. The possibilities opened by this project multiply wonderfully, as seen by the diversity of works on view, all of which find an expression of vitality through their mediums. Perhaps these artists working with mixed media are finding a way to reaffirm our bodily connection. They have a way of bringing out the physicality of their materials in the medium’s interactions, in divergent forms. We find surprising juxtapositions or forms springing out of their prior uses. Though in different ways, the works presented allude to the body: the presence of the artist’s hand in placing objects just so; suggestive forms; organic and inorganic decay; human detritus, and more.
Power Puff with Black Racing StripesI Can’t Breathe
While at Expo Chicago I met so many interesting people and organizations creating social practice art and making a difference in their community.
This is one of my favs…
Black Creativity
Let me find out that the Black Creativity program at Museum of Science & Industry has been celebrating African American achievement in science, technology, engineering, art and medicine for 50 years.
Free Your Mind is a textile public art installation aiming to collect, embed and release personal narratives about Microaggressions.
Microaggressions are subtle, intentional — and oftentimes unintentional — everyday interactions or behaviors that communicate hostile, derogatory or negative racial messages or assumptions toward historically marginalized groups.
The weight of these daily interactions underpins very real consequences… stress, anger, frustration, self-doubt and ultimately feelings of powerlessness and invisibility.
Free Your Mind intends to expose these interactions and provide a release for the participating individuals. Participants have the feeling of being seen and acknowledged while interacting with the installation.
The installation evolves with each new ribbon, keeping a public record of disempowering interactions, that can be exposed and addressed.
Last year, Free Your Mind toured, collecting story ribbons in Bayonne NJ, Jersey City NJ, and during Miami Art Week. This summer at Governors Island, Free Your mind is documenting your story.
#freeyourmindart
Free Your Mind
You Are So Articulate
In this weaving, each piece of yarn is representative of a conversation where I was acknowledged for being able to express my thoughts and ideas. Being told I’m well-spoken often comes off as a backhanded compliment. It carries problematic connotations that, it is unusual for someone of my race to be intelligent or eloquent.
The completed weaving is displayed on a DYI loom, as if the work is still in progress because some version of this conversation, continues still…
The assignment… collage one iPhone photo, to pass the time while riding NJ Transit 123 bus from Union City NJ to NYC the summer of 2015.
Have you ever had someone put their hands in your hair without asking first?
This was a regular occurrence for me while riding the bus or subway… before the Pandemic. This is not ok. Please don’t pet me like a dog because my hair fascinates you.
Today, I rarely use public transportation and work mostly from home. I wonder, has social distancing caused a shift in this behavior?
Despite a revolving door of daily microaggressions reminding me I do not belong, I imagine a life free from the constraints of implicit bias. I CHOOSE to live a life of Joyful Resistance, finding solace in cherished memories attached to materiality.
Joyful Resistance is a celebration of the alchemy that occurs when disparate materials are assembled to create something new, more beautiful, and more purposeful.
All the work in my upcoming solo show was made while the Pandemic took me on a emotional rollercoaster of a journey through self inspection, loss, isolation and racial trauma.
While in lockdown during the first month of the Pandemic, I organized my closet and storage unit. While sorting through my vintage accessories collection, childhood memories of playing dress up in my mother’s clothes flooded my brain like serotonin.
I recreated that moment with All Dressed Up And Nowhere To Go dressing the steel structure with Vintage hats, shoes and bags, 3 ply cotton ropes, pearls, rhinestones, wrapped ropes, yarn, trim.
Four structure, Vintage hat, shoes and bag, 3 ply cotton rope, pears, rhinestones, wrapped rope, yarn, trim, beading on steel structure
I custom dyed the cotton rope a bright yellow using Jacquard ink, then wrapped it with ribbon, pom pom trim, yarn and vintage fabric from a block print tapestry that hung in my college dorm room.
Yellow Gal Fringe 1
These three emotional baggage carts explore the Middle Passage and its impact upon my cultural identity as a Caribbean American woman. I still have a lot to unpack here. Both Appropriation Mud Cloth Baggage Cart, on the right and Hi Yellow Mud Cloth Baggage Cart on the left are not covered in zip ties. These carts have unresolved emotional baggage connected to them.
Middle Passage
We all carry emotional baggage. This manifests differently for each of us. Some of us carry shopping carts of pain and bitterness while some of us sport a backpack. How we choose to handle our baggage makes a difference. We have the choice, to let it define us or to let it go and move forward.
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, studying Swahili, researching local artists, looking at basketry and beading techniques.
I used the time I would have been in Kenya to clean, drill and string thousands of bottle caps into larger than life strings of pearls with the help of the Jersey City arts community during JCAST 2021.
