Category: Exhibitions

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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

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Summer 2025: Weaving New Futures

This summer, my work travels across states and seas, gathering threads of memory, identity, and community in a series of exhibitions that speak to love, resilience, and the emotional labor we carry.

The Future Belongs to the Loving
Now through – July 31, 2025
MAPSpace | 6 N Pearl St, 4th Floor, Port Chester, NY
mapspace.art

Love, in this exhibition, is not a soft whisper but a radical act. The Future Belongs to the Loving gathers voices from artists committed to compassion as resistance. Tender Crown is a sculptural meditation on the intimate rituals of Black hair care—where tenderness and tension coexist. The work evokes the memory of tight braids and firm hands, each parting and twist pulling not just at the scalp, but at identity itself. Beauty here is not effortless; it’s labor, discipline, love, and pain intertwined. This crown remembers the sting, the throb, the scalp still tingling with memory.

FIBER 2025
May 10 – June 19, 2025
Silvermine Galleries | 1037 Silvermine Rd, New Canaan, CT
Opening Reception: May 17

Fiber is language—resilient, tactile, expressive. At FIBER 2025, I join fellow artists in celebrating the breadth of contemporary fiber practices. My work here, Blackity Black Blanket ladder provides a visceral portrayal of navigating the relentless barrage of microaggressions, highlighting the absence of comfort. The ladders adorned with zip tie blankets symbolize my endeavor to ascend beyond microaggressions, yet the weight of these interactions impedes upward progress.

Theda Sandiford Studio Tour / Ecopark Walk
June 19, 2025 | 11am – 2:00pm
Sky Garden Gallery Retreat | Kingshill, St. Croix, USVI

For those on island or visiting, I invite you into my studio at Sky Garden—an oasis where art, ecology, and ancestral memory intersect. Walk the grounds, see where I gather and process materials, and join me in conversation about land-based creativity and healing. RSVP recommended for this intimate, immersive experience.

Fiberart International 2025
June 20 – August 30, 2025
Brew House Arts | 711 S 21st St #210, Pittsburgh, PA
Opening Night: June 20 | 4:30 – 8:00pm
Artist Gallery Tour: June 21 | 11am – 12pm

An international survey of fiber’s future, this juried exhibition is a touchstone for textile artists worldwide. I’m honored to exhibit among a visionary group that is pushing the medium’s boundaries. My work here, Polyurethane Paradise: Rainforest Rhapsody reflects on the environment and sustainability and is inspired by the lush vegetation found on my rainforest property in St Croix USVI. I wove single-use bottle caps into vines and flowers to replicating the vibrant colors and intricate patterns of vines, orchids, Heliconias, and Birds of Paradise that surround me.

MidAtlantic Fiber Association Conference – Emotional Baggage Cart Parade
June 26 – 29, 2025
Millersville University | Millersville, PA
View Exhibit Info →

We all carry invisible weight. The Emotional Baggage Cart Parade transforms that weight into visual metaphors through shopping carts wrapped in stories. This interactive exhibit invites reflection, empathy, and communal healing. Come see how individual struggles become collective strength—one cart at a time. MAFA has day passes available, come through so we can connect. Register here.

Wherever you are this summer—Port Chester, New Canaan, Pittsburgh, Millersville, or St. Croix—I hope our paths cross. Please let me know if we can meet up this month.

—Theda

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May Exhibitions & Beyond

2025 is shaping up to be a powerful year of storytelling, connection, and expansive visibility for my work across the U.S. and beyond. From New York City to San Diego, and even home on St. Croix, I’m honored to present a range of projects that explore collective memory, material transformation, and healing through fiber. Here’s where you can find me:

1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair
Dates: May 8–11, 2025
Location: Halo, 28 Liberty Street, NYC
I’m thrilled to return to 1-54, the leading fair dedicated to contemporary African art, presenting new work that bridges ancestral narratives with present-day urgency.

The Future Belongs to the Loving
Dates: May 3 – July 31, 2025
Location: MAPSpace, 6 N Pearl St 4th Floor, Port Chester, NY
More Info
I’ll be sharing Free Your Mind, a participatory installation unpacking microaggressions and offering a communal space for release and reflection.

FIBER 2025
Dates: May 10 – June 19, 2025
Opening Reception: May 17, 2025
Location: Silvermine Galleries, 1037 Silvermine Rd, New Canaan, CT
My Blackity Black Blanket Library Drape will be featured—an expansive textile work exploring Black identity, protection, and cultural memory.

Sky Garden Studio Tour & Ecopark Walk
Date: June 19, 2025, 11am–2pm
Location: Sky Garden Gallery Retreat, Kingshill, St. Croix, USVI
Come experience where the magic happens. I’ll be hosting an intimate studio tour and a guided walk through the ecopark—sharing process, stories, and island-grown inspiration.

Fiberart International 2025
Dates: June 20 – August 30, 2025
Location: Brew House Arts, 711 S 21st St #210, Pittsburgh, PA
This juried exhibition celebrates innovation in contemporary fiber art—an honor to be included among such dynamic global voices.

MidAtlantic Fiber Association Conference: Emotional Baggage Cart Parade
Dates: June 26–29, 2025
Location: Millersville University, Millersville, PA
Details Here
My interactive Emotional Baggage Cart Parade installation will invite participants to name, confront, and ceremoniously discard emotional burdens.

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

If you’re near any of these locations, I would love to see you! Each exhibition is an invitation to engage, reflect, and participate in the stories woven into my work. Stay tuned for more details and behind-the-scenes updates.

With gratitude,
Theda