Category: Exhibitions

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Newark Arts Festival 2025: Finding JOY Together

I’m thrilled to share that I’ll be back in Newark this fall for Newark Arts Festival 2025: JOY, and I couldn’t be more excited! This festival is always such a special time to reconnect with friends I haven’t seen in far too long and to celebrate the incredible community of artists and supporters that call Newark area home. If you’re planning to attend, let’s definitely link up.

My celebrations kick off in style at The Gold Ball on October 8, 6–11pm at the Newark Museum of Art. From there, you’ll find my work in not one but two powerful exhibitions, each embracing JOY as a creative force that sustains, uplifts, and sparks transformation.

Newark Arts Festival 2025: JOY

📍 Newark Museum of Art (49 Washington St, Newark, NJ)
🗓 October 8, 2025 – November 2, 2026

  • Classic LBD & Boa Quill
    • Classic LBD recasts the iconic little black dress as armor against microaggressions.
    • Boa Quill poses the question: If I adorned myself in a feather boa made of zip ties, would you still come for me in the same way?

Newark Arts Festival 2025: Pure Joy

📍 Express Newark – Paul Robeson Galleries, Main Gallery (Third Floor, Hahnes Building, 54 Halsey St, Newark, NJ)
🗓 October 8, 2025 – November 26, 2026

  • Power Puff with Black Racing Stripe Emotional Baggage Cart is an Emotional Baggage Cart adorned with soft, vibrant plastic pom-poms that transform weight into play, joy, and resilience.

🎉 Opening Reception: Thursday, October 9, from 5pm onward
Gallery Hours:

  • Festival Weekend: Friday 12–5pm, Saturday 12–5pm
  • Regular Hours: Mon–Wed 12–5pm, Thu 12–8pm, Sat 12–5pm

At Newark Arts Festival this year, we’re centering JOY, that golden state of being that connects us to our shared humanity. JOY is resistance. JOY is healing. JOY is transformation. My work joins many others in asking: What’s your JOY?

I can’t wait to celebrate, to see familiar faces, and to bask in the joy that art brings us all.

✨ Will you be there? Let me know, I’d love to catch up.

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You’re Invited: Pure Joy Opening at Newark Arts Festival 2025

I’m excited to share that my work will be part of Pure Joy, Newark Arts’ inaugural group exhibition at the Paul Robeson Galleries @ Express Newark. This landmark show celebrates Newark Arts Festival 2025 and brings together over 70 visual artists exploring joy as a creative force.

Pure Joy highlights joy not as fleeting, but as a catalyst for resilience, hope, and connection. Through painting, film, and mixed-media, the exhibition showcases how artists transform joy into an act of resistance, love, and cultural celebration.

As Audre Lorde reminds us: “Once we recognize we can feel deeply, we can love deeply, we can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy.”

✨ Please RSVP (free) to join me for the opening reception and festival weekend!

Opening Reception: Thursday, 5–9pm
Festival Hours: Friday 5–10pm | Saturday 12–5pm
Regular Hours: Mon–Wed 12–5pm | Thurs 12–8pm | Sat 12–5pm

Let’s celebrate joy together!

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Meltdown: A Changing Climate

Curated by Patricia Miranda and supported by ArtsWestchester, this exhibition brings together artists including Rachel Olivia Berg, Zaria Forman, Jaanika Peerna, Sarah Cameron Sunde, myself, and many more to confront the urgent realities of climate change.

The show reflects on the Hudson Valley’s vulnerabilities to rising waters and the shifting symbolism of ice, once a resource, now a fragile warning of what we stand to lose.

My piece, Polyurethane Paradise: Rainforest Rhapsody, transforms single-use bottle caps into woven vines and blossoms inspired by the lush vegetation on my rainforest property. The work reimagines waste as beauty while holding space for the tension between human consumption and the natural world’s resilience.

Artists have always been catalysts for awareness. Meltdown invites us to bear witness, reflect, and act.

Meltdown: A Changing Climate

Opening Reception: Saturday, October 11, 2025, 4-6PM

Exhibition Dates: October 12, 2025- January 11, 2026

Location: ArtsWestchester, 31 Mamaroneck Ave, White Plains, NY

Theda Sandiford Polyurethane Paradise: Rainforest Rhapsody Woven bottlecaps vines on blue and white polyurethane rope and paracord draped on rolling Z rack 79 x 12 x 72 in 2023
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October Exhibitions: Newark & San Diego

October is shaping up to be a joyful, art-filled month, and I’m thrilled to share that I’ll be participating in three exhibitions that hold deep meaning for me. Each show invites us to consider resilience, transformation, and the many ways art can be a vessel for joy and collective healing.

Newark Arts Festival 2025: JOY

📍 Newark Museum of Art, 49 Washington St, Newark, NJ
🗓 October 8, 2025 – November 2, 2026

At the Newark Museum of Art, two of my pieces will be on view: Classic LBD and Boa Quill.

  • Classic LBD reimagines the iconic little black dress as armor against microaggressions.
  • Boa Quill asks the question: If I adorned myself in a feather boa of zip ties, would you still come for me in the same way?

Both works embody my ongoing exploration of how everyday objects and adornments can be transformed into protective talismans.

Newark Arts Festival 2025: Pure Joy

📍 Express Newark – Paul Robeson Galleries, Main Gallery, Hahnes Building, 54 Halsey St, Newark, NJ
🗓 October 8, 2025 – November 26, 2026

At Express Newark, I’ll be showing Power Puff with Black Racing Stripe Emotional Baggage Cart. Covered in bright pom-poms, this work transforms heaviness into play, using joy itself as a form of resistance and resilience.

Meltdown: A Changing Climate

Opening Reception: Saturday, October 11, 2025, 4–6pm
Dates: October 12, 2025 – January 11, 2026
Location: ArtsWestchester Galleries, 31 Mamaroneck Ave, White Plains, NY
Learn More

Curated by Patricia Miranda, Meltdown addresses the urgent realities of climate change through the lens of ice as both resource and warning. My work Polyurethane Paradise: Rainforest Rhapsody reflects on the lush vegetation of my rainforest property, reimagining single-use plastics as woven blossoms to mirror the vibrant forms of heliconias and birds of paradise.

Interpretations 2025

📍 Visions Museum of Textile Art, 2825 Dewey Rd #100, San Diego, CA
🗓 October 17, 2025 – January 10, 2026
🎉 Festival Days: October 17–18, 2025

I’m honored to be part of Interpretations 2025 at the Visions Museum of Textile Art in San Diego. This exhibition celebrates innovation in textile art and brings together a remarkable community of artists. My Blackity Black Blanket Ladders will be on display. Blackity Black Blanket Ladders are woven monuments of reclaimed materials that honor Black resilience, transforming the weight of microaggressions into visible, collective testimony.

October will be a month of celebration, connection, and, most importantly, JOY. If you plan to attend Newark Arts Festival or Interpretations 2025, let me know, I’d love to see you there and share in these moments together.

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Mark Your Calendars: Newark Arts Festival 2025: JOY

From October 8–12, 2025, Newark Arts Festival will transform the city into a living canvas of art, music, and culture. This year’s theme, JOY, celebrates its power as a bold and transformative force—one that uplifts, empowers, and connects us all.

JOY is not frivolous. It is strength, harmony, and revolutionary change. This October, the festival invites us to embrace JOY in its fullest sense, through exhibitions, live performances, thought-provoking talks, family-friendly programming, and more.

I’m honored to be showing work in two venues this year:

Newark Museum of Art

49 Washington St, Newark, NJ
Works on view: Classic LBD & Boa Quill (2 of 5)

These works address the insidious weight of microaggressions, those subtle, often unconscious insults that people of color experience in everyday life.

  • Have you been followed by security while shopping?
  • Asked to prove you “belong” in your own home or garage?
  • Mistaken for “the help” in a store or restaurant?
  • Or expected to represent “all Black Americans” when the only person of color in a room?

These furtive slights accumulate into stress, anger, frustration, and invisibility. Classic LBD recasts the timeless “little black dress” as armor against microaggressions, while Boa Quill expands this conversation, transforming stereotype and bias into a statement of resistance and resilience.

Boa Quill
Theda Sandiford
100′ of slip half hitched chain black glitter 1/4” cotton rope, knotted with ribbon, recycled sari ribbon, acrylic yarn, pearls and 8” zip ties on bamboo ring.
60 x 14 x 4 in
2021
Classic LBD
Theda Sandiford
Recycled fishing net, ribbon, paracord and handmade jewelry on dressform
46 x 20 x 6 in
2020

Express Newark

54 Halsey St, Newark, NJ
Work on view: Power Puff with Black Racing Stripe Emotional Baggage Cart

This piece transforms a reclaimed shopping cart, wrapped in woven New York Post newspaper sleeves, into a vessel of joyful resistance. BAD NEWS becomes reimagined as beauty, hope, and empowerment, an act of flipping the narrative.

Joyful resistance is about reclaiming space, finding connection, and celebrating resilience in the face of adversity. It is about holding onto vision and possibility, even when challenged by oppressive forces. By weaving the mundane into the extraordinary, this cart becomes both a shield and a beacon, carrying stories of survival and transformation.

Power Puff with Black Racing Stripe Emotional Baggage Cart Theda Sandiford Bike reflectors and bell, 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

Come Celebrate JOY

Newark Arts Festival 2025 is an invitation to see Newark in full, vibrant color. Whether you are deeply rooted in the arts or simply curious, come celebrate JOY as the heartbeat of the community.

📅 October 8–12, 2025
📍 Newark Museum of Art & Express Newark

What’s your JOY?

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Fall 2025 Exhibitions: Newark & San Diego

This fall promises to be a vibrant season of art, travel, and community. I’m thrilled to share two major opportunities where my work will be on view in Newark and San Diego.

Newark Arts Festival 2025: JOY

October 8–12, 2025
📍 Newark Museum of Art, 49 Washington St, Newark, NJ
📍 Express Newark, 54 Halsey St, Newark, NJ

This year’s Newark Arts Festival embraces JOY as a radical, transformative force—one that uplifts, empowers, and connects us. I’m honored to be showing in two venues:

  • Newark Museum of Art – Classic LBD & Boa Quill
    These works address the invisible weight of microaggressions, recasting the iconic little black dress as armor and weaving narratives of resilience and defiance into fiber form.
  • Express Newark – Power Puff with Black Racing Stripe Emotional Baggage Cart
    Woven from recycled New York Post sleeves on a reclaimed shopping cart, this piece transforms bad news into joyful resistance, reclaiming space and rewriting the narrative.

Interpretations 2025

October 17, 2025 – January 10, 2026
📍 Visions Museum of Textile Art, 2825 Dewey Rd #100, San Diego, CA

Hot on the heels of Newark, I’ll be heading to San Diego for Interpretations 2025. This exhibition brings together textile artists from around the world to explore innovation, tradition, and storytelling through fiber.

  • Festival Days: October 17–18
  • Special Events: Award & Donor Party (Oct 17) and Artists’ Talks & Dinner (Oct 18)

I’m honored to have my work included in this gathering of visionaries at the Visions Museum of Textile Art, where the boundaries of fiber art continue to be pushed and redefined.

Looking Ahead

September and October will be a whirlwind of celebration, and connection. I look forward to sharing moments from both Newark and San Diego as these works take on new life in community.

Stay tuned for behind-the-scenes updates, and if you’re in either city, I hope you’ll join me in celebrating the power of textiles, storytelling, and JOY.

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Mid-Summer Update: Shows, Studio Time & Liminal Rites

This summer has been a gentle stillness—a season of rest, reflection, and quiet becoming.

I’m honored to have work currently on view in Fiberart International 2025, a juried biennial exhibition showcasing contemporary textile art from around the globe. If you’re in Pittsburgh, you can catch the show at Brew House Arts (711 S 21st St #210) through August 30, 2025. The depth and diversity of work in this show is incredible, it’s worth the visit.

Looking ahead, I’ll be showing work in Interpretations 2025 at the Visions Museum of Textile Art in San Diego. The exhibition opens October 17 and runs through January 10, 2026. I’ll be in town for the Festival Days, on the 17th and 18th. If you’re in Southern California, I’d love to connect while I’m there.

In the meantime, I’m taking the next three months to dive deeply into the development of Liminal Rites, a new immersive installation exploring the thresholds between this world and the spirit world. This body of work has been slowly gestating since the beginning of the year, guided by dreams, rituals, and research.

I’ve been gathering foraged materials, weaving textures of memory and transformation, and building what will become a ritual altar table layered with intention. Video, soundscapes, and scent will round out the sensory experience, designed not just to be seen, but felt.

This is sacred, slow work. A season of inward focus. I’m allowing the process to unfold in its own rhythm, trusting the liminal space between inspiration and manifestation.

Stay tuned. More to come soon.

Theda

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July And Beyond

What’s Now & What’s Next with Theda Sandiford

Fiberart International 2025

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.

Coming Soon: Interpretations 2025

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

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Join Me at MAFA 2025: Weave, Unburden, and Heal

This month, I’m bringing the Emotional Baggage Cart Parade to the MidAtlantic Fiber Association (MAFA) Conference, and I’d love for you to be part of this transformative, hands-on public art experience.

📍 Millersville University, Millersville, PA
📅 June 26–29, 2025
🔗 More Info →

We all carry emotional baggage—grief, stress, trauma, worry. While it shows up differently for each of us, the weight is real. How we carry it—or release it—shapes our path forward.

The Emotional Baggage Cart Parade is a living, evolving public sculpture and a communal ritual. At MAFA, I’ll be leading a participatory art session where you’re invited to weave your story directly onto a full-size shopping cart using provided materials—or you can bring meaningful objects of your own to integrate into the piece.

Through open dialogue, I’ll share the inspiration behind the project and invite you to reflect on what you’re carrying, what you’re ready to release, and how creative expression can serve as a powerful tool for healing.

Public Art Project: Emotional Baggage Cart – Unburden, Weave, Connect, Heal

🧶 Weave your truth
🧳 Unpack your story
🤝 Connect with others
💫 Heal through art

This isn’t just about making art—it’s about making space. Space for empathy. Space for release. Space for transformation.

Come contribute to a collective sculpture that symbolizes our shared journey of resilience. Together, we’ll turn invisible weight into visible solidarity.

See you in Millersville. Let’s unburden, weave, and heal—together.
—Theda

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Still Time to Catch FIBER 2025 at Silvermine Galleries

Blackity Black Blanket, ladders and emotional baggage cart, ladders only

If you haven’t made it to FIBER 2025 yet, there’s still time. The exhibition runs through June 19, 2025 at Silvermine Galleries in New Canaan, CT, and it’s a must-see for anyone interested in the power and politics of fiber art today.

My work in the show, Blackity Black Blanket Ladder, offers a visceral reflection on the cumulative weight of microaggressions. Zip tie blankets draped over a ladder suggest an attempted ascent—each rung a moment of resilience—but the comfort one might expect is absent. Instead, the piece confronts the viewer with the tension of trying to rise while carrying the heaviness of daily indignities.

FIBER 2025 features an incredible lineup of artists redefining what fiber can do and say. Don’t miss your chance to experience it.

📍 Silvermine Galleries
📅 On view through June 19, 2025
🧶 More info here

—Theda