This fall, my work is on view across Newark NJ, White Plains NY, and San Diego CA, each exhibition exploring resilience, transformation, and the power of joy.
At the Newark Museum of Art, Classic LBD and Boa Quill appear in Newark Arts Festival: JOY (Oct 8 – Nov 2) reimagining the “little black dress” as armor against microaggressions. Nearby at Express Newark, Power Puff with Black Racing Stripe turns bad news into joyful resistance in Pure Joy (Oct 8 – Nov 26).
My work also joins Meltdown: A Changing Climate at ArtsWestchester (Oct 12 – Jan 11, 2026, a collective reflection on ecological and emotional endurance and Interpretations 2025 at Visions Museum of Textile Art in San Diego (Oct 17 – Jan 10, 2026), celebrating the expressive language of fiber.
From Newark’s vibrant energy to the quiet tides of St. Croix, this season is about finding JOY in resistance, beauty in change, and meaning in every thread.
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 2021Classic 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
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.
Join me for Opening Night of the Newark Arts Festival and celebrate Newark Arts Festival: Artful Healing, the NAF 2022 annual group exhibition!
Curated by NAF 2022 Lead Curator Adrienne Wheeler and the Museum’s Elena Muñoz.
NAF 2022 kicks off with a festive celebration featuring live performances by dancers, drummers, vocalists and more. View artwork and explore healing spaces throughout the museum.
The theme in 2022 features art as medicine. Participating artists demonstrate what healing means or looks like to them and inspire others with their messages of hope, comfort, and encouragement.
A dynamic presentation made up of a virtual exhibition and public art installation on Governors Island, Hidden in Plain Sight confronts the psychological impact of racial gaslighting as revealed in her everyday interactions.
Public Art Installation On View: May 2021 – May 2022
On Location: Summit Village Green, 356 Broad Street Summit, NJ
Three Emotional Baggage Carts are on display for the next year. I want to draw people in and spark their curiosity. Not only to discover what materials are used to create these sculptures, but to look within and recognize the emotional baggage they are carrying. Each cart is affixed with a solar panel. When the sun sets, the carts light up and take on a new meaning and form, glowing from within.
Hiding In Plain Sight
Solo Exhibit on View: June 10–August 23, 2021
On Location: The Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts (MoCADA)/ Nolan Park House 7A, Governors Island, NYC
Visit MoCADA’s Virtual Gallery here.
A dynamic presentation made up of a virtual exhibition and public art installation on Governors Island, Hidden in Plain Sight confronts the psychological impact of racial gaslighting as revealed in her everyday interactions.
The Social Fabric: Black Artistry in Fiber Arts, An Exhibition in Homage to Viki Craig
Exhibit On View: June 4, 2021 – October 24, 2021
On Location: Morris Museum, 6 Normandy Heights Rd, Morristown, NJ
Curated by Gwendolyn Barrington Jackson, Nette Forné Thomas, Onnie Strother, and Wannetta Phillips (Art in the Atrium, Inc.), with Ronald T. Labaco (Morris Museum).
Featuring 50 works by over 27 artists, including Aminah Robinson, Beverly McCutcheon, Bisa Washington, Carole Robinson, Clara Nartey, Denise Toney, Ellaree Pray, Faith Ringgold, Gladys Barker Grauer, Glendora Simonson, Janet O. Green, Jeanine Bowen, Katie Commodore, Kianga Jinaki, Michael Cummings, Minnie Melvin, Sharela May Bonfield, Sherry Shine, Shervone Neckles, Stephen Towns, Theda Sandiford, Tina Williams Brewer, Toni Thomas, Viki Craig, Wannetta Phillips, and Maureen Kelleher and The Social Justice Collaboration Quilts Project.
NJ Arts Annual: Revision & Respond
Exhibit On View: June 17–August 22, 2021
Location: Newark Museum of Art, 49 Washington St, Newark, NJ
How did the pandemic, economic distress, and reckoning with racial injustice influence the artists? What emotions and perspectives do they express? How are they similar to or different from your personal experiences? We hope that these creative voices speak to you and offer a way to process the intense events of our current world.
My weaving, You Are So Articulate, is currently displayed at the 2021 New Jersey Arts Annual: ReVision and Respond at The Newark Museum of Art.
Each piece of yarn used to in this weaving is representative of a particular conversation where I was acknowledged for being able to express my thoughts and ideas. As you can see this conversation comes up quite a bit.
You Are So Articulate-
You Are So Articulate- close up
You Are So Articulate- close up
You Are So Articulate comes in many forms, including…
you speak so well… you are well read… you speak white… and even “that went better than I was expecting”, comment after I nail the presentation.
Telling someone they are well-spoken is a back handed compliment. It carries the connotation that, it is unusual for someone Black to be intelligent.
The completed weaving is displayed on a DYI loom, as if, it is a work in progress because some version of this conversation, continues still, till this very day.
Bottle caps, neon yellow 550 paracord, 200′ neon yellow camo 850 paracord, hollow braided polyurethane rope, solar LED rope lights, recycled Fresh Direct bag and commercial fishing net, zip ties, gold spray paint on recovered shopping cart. Photo by April Tracey
Virtual Tour of ReVision and Respond
How have the past few years of turbulence, isolation, unrest, and injustice affected artists?
Join me for a free Virtual Tour of ReVision and Respond, showing at the Newark Museum of Art on June 24
