Paper Artist Sandy Bleifer's Conversations

Councilwoman Nithya Raman, artist Sandy Belifer, lead conservator Kiernan Graves
photo by Gary Leonard

Now approaching 50 years old, my Can of Cardines mural in Encino has been fully restored and rededicated. That the painted areas survived this long was no doubt due to power washing the wall surfaces before the original painting in 1975, thanks to the Encino Fire Department at the request of then City Councilman, Marvin Braude. This time, in preparation of sealing the entire wall, the City’s Graffiti Control Systems came out in the middle of the night to pressure wash the wall surrounding the painting.

While the painting of the cars was still intact and protected by Vandalgard, the “key” and its shadow, which extend into the lower area, was completely painted out by city crews over-painting of graffiti Had the lower area also been previously sealed, it could have been reclaimed. We are fortunate that Site and Studio Conservation and a crew of trained conservators were able to remove deeply embedded graffiti, reconstruct the lost painting of the key and its shadow from photographs, and see to the maximum protection of a final sealant.

This was one of Los Angeles’ first murals under Citywide Murals, and since then this bold public art form has come to define many areas of Los Angeles, its residents, local history and culture, and pure artistic expression. Today, much of LA street art has become iconic and cherished, yet no consideration has been given to issues of proactive surface preparation, best practices in painting and quality of materials, protective sealants, interim maintenance, and restoration. Unfortunately, we have lost many excellent murals like the ones downtown that were painted for the last Olympics we hosted in 1984.

The City needs to view these public-facing artworks with the same seriousness offered to art that hangs in museums. We need an entity to function like the Los Angeles Conservancy does to protect historic architecture and neighborhoods by creating a data base, establishing guidelines and best practices as well as being a watch dog for the vulnerability of art subjected to weather and vandalism. Today, universities and local programs like Inner Resources Mural Conservation Apprenticeship Project are training the next generation of mural conservators. The science and technology of mural preservation is advancing. We need the institutional and financial support for this important work that should be performed by professionals.

Sandy BleiferApril 27, 2025activism

Venice Heritage Museum: Celebrating & Preserving Venice's History

A long time coming, Venice Heritage Museum at 228 Main St. is dedicated to the beachside neighborhood founded in 1905 by Abbott Kinney and features photos along with a rich archive of other materials relevant to Venice Beach’s history as a hub for artists, surfers, and skateboarders. It opened in its permanent location in March 2024.

As the museum was preparing for its opening, I was happy to sit down for an interview detailing my arrival to Venice in 1992 as I was seeking to be part of a greater artist community.

Please enjoy my interview and visit the Museum’s website to learn of ongoing exhibits and events, and consider supporting the Museum.

Sandy BleiferDecember 2, 2024activism

At the Smithsonian: Now on the Record

I am pleased to announce that I have been accepted into the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art – “the world’s preeminent and most widely used research center dedicated to collecting, preserving, and providing access to primary sources that document the history of the visual arts in America.”

The Archives are “a vital resource to anyone interested in American culture over the past 200 years and consist of more than 20 million letters, diaries, scrapbooks, manuscripts, financial records, photographs, films, and audiovisual recordings of artists, dealers, collectors, critics, scholars, museums, galleries, associations, and other art world figures.”

What are in my archives?

While the Smithsonian’s Archives do not include original work as museums do, my archives contain primary working materials revealing my creative process, sources, methods, even musings as I worked through the myriad of decisions and revelations from beginning to end of the creation of a work. (The Smithsonian is currently cataloging all my content to make it available to view in person or to order PDFs via a link on the website.)

Here is one example of a source image and a quick sketch of ideas for two of the Holocaust series:

As a printmaker throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, I adopted the practice of producing a DOCUMENTATION INFORMATION SHEET for every edition as well as for individual works. In addition to the Artist Name, Title, exact Date of Completion, Size, Price, Media/Materials, I include a section I call “Concept” – an ongoing conversation I have with my work – that reflects on sources of inspiration, imagery, and thoughts on the relationship to other work.

Since I tend to create series, I’ve compiled several thematically cohesive bodies of work into monographs, which are included in the Archives:

a window into the art ecosystem of their times

The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art seek to preserve and highlight artists that may have flown under the radar, especially women and artists of color. Prior to my expanded inclusion in the Smithsonian’s Archives, I have been a footnote of their extensive file on Space Gallery 1975-1995. Now, under my own name, my full career (to date) will be featured, along with my connections to institutions and collections. In addition, my documentation of an extensive informal network that supported many working artists of my generation, including Space Gallery, Jack Duganne’s Workshop, i.e., Venice Art Walk, and Venice Art Block Open Studio Tours will be preserved.

Now, what about the artwork itself?

Unfortunately, the Smithsonian cannot collect actual art works. But what they are doing is preserving something that often would be lost or discarded.

To learn more about the depth of resources compiled in the archives, please visit the Smithsonian’s blog.

Sandy BleiferJune 3, 2024activism

ARTISTIC VOICE: Beauty & Fragility in the World

*PAPER +Leaves VI: Enmeshed*, included in the ***Anything Goes!*** exhibit

Throughout my career, I have been compelled to examine social and environmental concerns through my art, and in doing so to prompt my audience to examine and consider these issues. I frequently turn my lens on sustainability and environmental degradation. Using paper as a reference point and dried leaves as a signifier for the natural world, I juxtaposed them with single use plastic, mesh fruit bags, ties, and other industrial plastic materials. Paper +Leaves VI: Enmeshed , though deceptively “beautiful,” aims to preserve the tension between recyclable and non-biodegradable materials coexisting and degrading at different rates in the landscape. As long as plastic pollution continues as a force antithetical to nature, it is important to underscore its pervasiveness and intrusiveness.

I am pleased to have been invited to participate in the upcoming exhibition, Anything Goes!, at the venerable California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica, where I will be exhibiting the above work. The exhibit runs from September 9 - 30, 2023.

The show was conceived and curated by MRG Fine Art, artists' and collectors' services committed to promoting a select group of artists and, as well, providing brokerage and advisory services to collectors. Michael Goodman, principal of MRG, is bringing his expertise and knowledge of the art world to the California Heritage Museum for the benefit of this important local cultural institution.

You can find a selection of some of my major large-scale works managed by MRG Fine Art on Artsy.

Explore of the pieces of PAPER +Leaves in book form, available in print and digitally.

New Print Releases

Please check out new print releases in the Art section showing several series dealing with climate and the passage of time as structural principles resulting in series of unique prints from a common printed matrix.

Sandy BleiferAugust 31, 2023

COMMUNITY: Showcasing Artists

Artists, like any others who venture into uncharted waters, need the support and acknowledgement of their peers. Having strived for over 50 years to develop a body of work that is uniquely mine while simultaneously being active in community building, it is particularly gratifying to be acknowledged for both.

I was honored to be selected one of 2023’s Legendary Women Artists of Venice and am totally impressed by the array of women creatives who have received this award in the past. It was thrilling to see the enthusiastic turnout at the event this year.

The three awardees each received a beautiful ceramic sculpture by Venice artist, Elizabeth Orleans.

The awards are made possible by the Venice Chamber of Commerce and Venice Art Crawl, an art walk orchestrated by photographer and community organizer Sunny Bak, which highlights and places art in Venice locations to draw crowds of people to these quarterly events.

It is yet another example of how Venice truly supports its working creatives and brings art to the forefront of community life.

I am pleased to announce that I have again - for the third time - had a work selected for the Brand 51 Annual National Juried Exhibition of Works on Paper. This is the preeminent acknowledgement for artists working in the medium of paper. I will be exhibiting one of THE TIMES Kimono Series: Uvalde.

Brand Library & Art Center and the Brand Associates invite you to start your summer off artfully by joining us for a reception celebrating the opening of Brand 51. This year’s annual exhibition runs from July 8 through September 1, 2023, and features 98 artworks from around the country chosen by juror Ara Oshagan, curator of ReflectSpace Gallery at Glendale’s Central Library. We will be welcoming new artists to Works on Paper as well as reconnecting with artists from past years; all are offering us the opportunity to explore the versatility of the paper medium.

Free Opening Reception: Saturday, July 8 from 7–9:30 p.m.

Print Archives

Please visit my new art page, New Releases from my Print Archives, on BleiferInPrint.com. Going forward, I will be offering more editions that have not been available since their original release in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

The Southwest series, newly available for purchase, are from my innovative work in silkscreen, which I refer to as Constructed Silkscreens. The printed matrix in each edition has been manipulated during the printing process by hand and/or during the subsequent collage process to produce a set of unique members of the edition.

This first release is work inspired by visits to the Southwest and utilize techniques that mimic the chemical and geological forces that shape and color the landscape of Sedona, the Grand Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, and Lake Powell. The entire Southwest series is presented in my book, PAPER: Southwest.

Sandy BleiferJune 27, 2023

THE TIMES: A Long Fermentation Process

I can only start to work on a piece when there is a confluence of image or subject with a particular paper. At the same time, I consider the methodology I want to employ (e.g. printing, painting, tearing, burning, etc.). For me, paper is not only a surface for the image but a painting and sculpting material in and of itself to be transformed into an element of the image. I never throw away an interesting scrap of paper – some date back to my early experiments in printing and papermaking. And I’ve been collecting newspaper photographs back to when color was first introduced in their printing. All of this is a protracted process. In my first blog post in May 2020, I acknowledged a cache of art papers that made sense for a new series, and this series was just recently completed. People are always asking, “How long did this piece take you to paint?” The answer is: “All of my life to the point of making it.”

It wasn’t until I began donating the balance of my collection of antique Japanese kimono in 2015 that I felt the pull of the kimono form as not only a “shaped canvas” but also as a vehicle for presenting some of the enduring themes in my art practice. I’ve utilized this format several times at this point.

THE TIMES – Kimono Series required a confluence of paper with subject along with the format and treatment. I had to determine the placement of images so as to utilize front and back, inside and out, to create a narrative, and a means of bringing the world of the photograph and the world of the paper together. It has taken 2-1/2 years to execute this series of 9 paper kimono.

THE TIMES – Kimono Series

To purchase a copy of THE TIMES monograph in print or PDF form, please click on the image.

THE TIMES has a double meaning: As a reference to the two newspapers (The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times) and to the timeliness of the subjects of the images collected from their pages. I have been concerned with issues of social justice and environmental crises for decades, which led me to collect newspaper photographs that I feel should become indelible – images to be burned into our collective conscience by canonizing them in an artwork.

These shaped canvases were constructed as a two-sided kimono to suggest that the finished art pieces were wearable and that the wearer thereby becomes an integral part of the condition of the subject depicted. (E.g. the viewer/implied wearer experiences the wars, the refugee crisis, the environmental crisis, etc.) Thus, the viewer wears and bears the tragedy.

Sacred Lands

When this edition was produced, the intention was to support the Standing Rock Sioux during their very public resistance of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The powerful photographs utilized on the front and back of this piece are by photographer Megan Louella Schoenbachler. Recently, we donated the balance of the edition to Lakota People’s Law Project to use to raise money and gain support for their ongoing struggle to protect their tribal lands.

For those who would like to take action in support of the ongoing effort to get the Dakota Access Pipeline removed from the ground, please visit this webpage where you can send a message to the Army Corps of Engineers.

Sacred Lands, 2017
a limited edition paper sculpture, color electrostatic print folded at the top with asphalt, signed and numbered

2023 Legendary Women Artists of Venice Awards

The VAC is pleased to announce that the 2023 Legendary Women Artists of Venice Award will be presented to film director Catherine Hardwicke, along with fine artist Sandy Bleifer and photographer Edizen Stowell.

I am honored to announce that I will be recognized at the “Legendary Women Artists of Venice” event on March 16, 2023, at The Gall3ry 1324 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, CA 90291, produced by the Venice Art Crawl .

If you can attend, it would be wonderful to see you there. To purchase tickets and for more information, please click here.

The Legendary Women Artists of Venice Award was established in honor of Women's History Month. The awards recognize the contribution of women to the arts and their profound impact on society. The awards are presented by the Venice Art Crawl and Venice Chamber of Commerce.

Legendary Women Artists of Venice recipients meet rigorous criteria of considerable accomplishment and contribution to the Arts and Venice Beach community -- each one has over 10 years of experience represented by their professional efforts, work, vision, and commitment. The award anticipates a lifetime of achievement for its recipients and the building of a new sisterhood in the Arts.

Funds raised at this event will help the VAC continue the preservation of the Arts in Venice.

Sandy BleiferFebruary 14, 2023

THE NEW YEAR: Connections

In this time of interruption and restraint, I have welcomed opportunities to reach beyond the conventional art networks into new realms with shared interests. I am honored to be featured in the current newsletter from the Arpana Aneesha Studio operated by Aneesha Parrone. Aneesha is a weaver/fiber artist and teacher in Longmont, Colorado, where she is surrounded by dramatic skyscapes with the Rocky Mountains as backdrop. She filters the ephemeral, transitory nature of her surroundings through a contemplative inner process into richly textured weavings and tapestries radiating with light and energy.

While we work in different media, subject matter and commercial worlds for our art, we share a similar internal process for the filtration of the things that inspire us and a commitment to community process. Her newsletters feature young artists in the classes and workshops of the Arpana Aneesha Studios and Guest Artists – those who are part of her circle of creatives.

Winter Guest 2022: Sandy Bleifer

Lustrous and grounded integrity are hallmarks of the art of Sandy Bleifer. The scope of her developed expression includes personal history, social debate, political and environmental discourse. Fluidity between the statement and the creative keep her audience fully engaged piquing intellect, heart, and creativity on every level. Audience dialogue is a flowing of energy with a letting go of bias; boundaries are expanded, more inclusive. Her primary material is paper, and as an artist, Sandy is in dialogue with all elements of her creative ventures. Sometimes the dialogue takes on a visceral interaction, sometimes poignant, sometimes transformative, uplifting all to a new level of understanding.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS PIECE, PLEASE VISIT ANEESHA’S NEWSLETTER.

HOLY SPARKS: An Initiative of the Braid, an innovative performance/art space in Los Angeles where contemporary Jewish topics explored through stories on stage were also being examined through fine arts, inviting audiences to engage more deeply with myriad themes.

In the early stages of the Covid shut down in 2020, I was contacted about a project of the Jewish Women’s Theatre, Los Angeles called Holy Sparks: Celebrating 50 Years of Women in the Rabbinate. It was an invitation to Jewish artists to create artwork about the pioneering women rabbis who had been interviewed and whose stories were archived.

I don’t consider myself a portrait artist, but I was intrigued by the challenge to “channel” a particular rabbi’s values and vision through art. I was given recorded interviews with Rabbi Jackie Tabick, the first woman rabbi in England, and selected what I thought were two defining elements: her consistent motivation to serve the community beyond the ritual functions of the rabbinet and her commitment to interfaith work. I wondered, “Did I have a visual vocabulary for a narrative?”

Ultimately, I drew on a technique I had utilized in 2009 in my Paper Becoming Me/Paper Becoming Chest/Paper Becoming Hip Series of cast Hosho paper for visualizing the hands of (I.e. the work of) G-d. I then tried a new photo transfer technique I was learning to make use of newspaper photographs I had been collecting for years. A photograph of a fleeing Syrian mother resting in a field with her children had been eating away at me and now I could present her situation as an object of the rabbi’s interfaith initiatives in the refugee community.

If you have yet to visit my new website, I invite you take a look to see the breadth of my work. I look forward to making more art connections as the year continues. Please reach out if you hear of opportunities.

Sandy BleiferJanuary 10, 2022

ARTCHIVES: Where Will the Art Go?

As the artists featured in Kienholz’s book age and die off, their work is increasingly being left to heirs and others ill-equipped to carry on sales and marketing efforts. My artist friends and I are in a quandary about what to do. Most of us donate art to fundraisers for worthy causes, continue to participate in exhibitions, and a small number have gallery representation, but there is still the larger issue of preserving a definitive body of an artist’s work for a fuller perspective and a possible new audience in the future.

Responding to growing international recognition of Los Angeles as a major art center in the 1980s, Lyn Kienholz, founder of California/International Arts Foundation, produced a comprehensive chronicle in 2010 of more than 500 artists who exhibited in the Los Angeles area – L.A. Rising: SoCal Artists Before 1980. Kienholz’s compendium acknowledged that these seminal, yet under-recognized artists, contributed to the emergence of Los Angeles onto the global stage beginning in the late 60’s and early 1970’s after 2 decades of dominance of post WW II New York/Abstract Expressionism. Her project highlighted that Los Angeles had become the place where women and people of color first achieved parity in the historically white male dominated field of fine art.

While I have been blessed with gallery and dealer representation in the past, my output has far exceeded what can be put into the public realm in the normal course of events. Since I tend to work in series and “bodies” of work, these installations are not easy to place, to transport, and to store.

*Installation photos of the Nagasaki/Hiroshima Memorial Series*

*Rental garage storage that contains three major series of paper sculptures*

*Large installation, currently stored in studio*

*Garage storage of flat and framed pieces*

There are several artist archives throughout the country, for example the Archives of American Art that was folded into the Smithsonian in 1970, but they do not include the actual artworks and instead focus on collateral materials such as exhibition announcements, artist notebooks, personal correspondence, etc. The problem is that there is no institutional safety net to archive art like we archive books and other forms of documentation. Unless most of an artist’s work has been purchased or acquired by an institution by the time of their death, any archived collateral materials are without reference. Entire bodies of artistic output are in danger of being lost to future generations. History shows that all too often important creative work goes unrecognized in the creator’s lifetime.

Interestingly, Hauser & Wirth, a major international string of galleries, has been representing previously under-recognized African-American artists, aging artists who have never been in the gallery and auction system, and estates of artists. In addition, they have set up the Hauser & Wirth Institute, a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) private operating foundation dedicated to art historical scholarship and to the preservation and accessibility of artists’ archives. This demonstrates that there is much of value to discover that is under the radar of the art marketplace.

While many Los Angeles artists will become commercially viable in their lifetime and their work acquired by collectors and institutions, many works will remain unsold and unrepresented by the commercial marketplace. We need to preserve the work of artists unrecognized in their lifetimes and make this work available to the public in similar ways that public parks make nature available to urban dwellers and libraries make books available to those who cannot avail themselves of bookstore merchandise.

There needs to be a network of ad hoc preservation for artwork spread around the City – Artchives or Artbanks – housing the artwork produced in that neighborhood. Simply digitizing a work of art is grossly inadequate to convey its full meaning and impact. The essence of art and its humanistic value lies in its physicality and cannot be adequately conveyed in other modalities. For starters there is scale, texture, nuance, and dimensionality in an in-person experience that digital reproduction can only approximate or symbolically indicate. There is also the experience of repeated physical encounters, such as if a work were installed in a school setting, that cumulatively can impact understanding and appreciation.

These works can be loaned or rented to local businesses (like LACMA once had an Art Rental Gallery), placed in public buildings, and displayed on a rotating basis in the area’s schools (perhaps with study guides prepared by curators-in-residence). They can be a resource for scholars and loaned for exhibition at very little cost. The art might find its way into a museum or private collection if the managers make work available for sale.

The management of these Artchives provides internship and employment opportunities for conservatorship, curatorial development, experience in exhibition management and curriculum development, and artist residencies. Depending on the configuration and location of the site, exhibitions and events can provide easy access and first-hand encounters for children, their families, and the public with authentic artwork produced by artists from their own communities. So much of modern life is shifting to virtual replication. We need to hold onto the experiential level of engagement when encountering art.

The question ultimately arises: How will this network of collections and programs be funded?
The precursor to this question is: Where will it be housed? – which could suggest how the costs could be covered.

Short of setting up a new institutional construct such as the Library system, this program is best served by being integrated into settings where a support structure is already in place and where the benefits are most needed: schools and institutions. Institutions can provide the scholars and conservators and may have budgets or in-kind assets like property and staff to at least partially support this program. That institution could then leverage its commitment and status to fundraise through grants and private sources.

Flexible real estate solutions are called for because of the physical “heft” of the art objects to be collected, their fragility, their need for ongoing attention, interpretation, handling, and to accommodate collections as they expand to encorporate new modalities such as installation, performance, and multimedia.

What are the real estate opportunities?

It’s unlikely the collections will be housed in facilities built to suit. Instead, it is more environmentally responsible to look to ad hoc solutions in existing buildings that can be adapted for the collection or shared with other institutions in various communities throughout the city and county. These neighborhood-based art archives offer opportunities for public/private partnerships in funding and management.

Artchives can be appended to existing community or college libraries or attached to a community’s adult school or continuing education facility or built into a neighborhood park, or can repurpose a decommissioned public facility such as an outdated post office, fire station, police station, storage facility, hospital, or become a priority for adaptive reuse of excess city or county properties.
An Artchive could be the community benefit incentive or amenity for a developer of affordable housing or senior housing or a shopping center. It could be attached to transit stations as an attraction for the use of public transportation. It could be incorporated as part of an “Opportunity Site” where local governments promote transitioning neighborhoods to the development community.
Housing these collections in dormant otherwise vacant spaces could help repurpose commercially obsolete structures – often historically/architecturally significant buildings – such as abandoned factories and warehouses and non-compliant hospitals, and spread out this vast trove of artwork into the communities where the artists lived or worked. This project salvages currently non-viable commercial properties as well as endangered artwork.
Some industries throughout the city have become obsolete. Abandoned facilities could house an Artchive, e.g. the Firestone Tire Factory in South Gate on a State University campus. It is slated for demolition for a parking lot.
The old County Hospital in Boyle Heights – 1.5M square feet – is a landmark that cannot be demolished and can never be a hospital again. We need to bring such real estate assets that have historic and/or architectural value back into use.

Now is the time to develop the Artchive before we lose so much of the art which brought our region to prominence.

Sandy BleiferApril 17, 2021activism

MEMORIALS: A Role for Artists in a Post-pandemic World

Memorials have been in the news lately with the Black Lives Matter Movement spotlighting the impact of Civil War era statuary, and memorials have certainly been a staple of art practice throughout time. Memorializing human and global tragedy has been a recurrent theme in my own work – in particular, remembering the Holocaust and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

*Exhibition of the Holocaust series at LA Artcore Gallery, 1994*

*Installation of the Hiroshima/Nagaski Memorial Project, 1995*

The problem we have seen with permanent memorial art objects (statues and paintings) is that they are often tied to a political and historical moment that history may look back upon differently as we have seen with the Confederate monuments that are being pulled down. Monuments also take up real estate and require maintenance even if they remain acceptable our outlive their significance.

In addition to the physical artwork, my practice of memorializing tragic events has always involved public participation and reflection.

*Me with Tomoko Maekawa, head of the Nagasaki community committee, which facilitated my Hiroshima/Nagasaki Memorial Project in 1995 including discussion groups with citizens and survivors in Nagasaki.*

Rather than simply presenting an art exhibition, I have always tried to use my art as a catalyst for discussion, reflection and educational outreach. I became an artist/activist long before Social Practice was a subject area in art curricula.

These are some of the Project Reports from the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Memorial and the Holocaust Projects that show the range of public programming:

Hiroshima/Nagasaki Memorial Project (Catalog)

Archival catalog of a traveling exhibition of paper sculptures as an artistic response to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 produced by artist, Sandy Bleifer. The exhibition along with community, artistic and educational programs traveled to 3 cities in the US and to Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Osaka in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the bombings. Available for purchase and a free PDF download at Blurb.

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Project Report

Archival materials documenting the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Memorial Project, a body of art work and related community, educational and ancillary events that comprised a traveling exhibition commemorating the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki upon the 50th anniversary of those events. This report accompanies the publication, Hiroshima Nagasaki. Available for purchase and a free PDF download at Blurb.

Holocaust Series (Catalog)

A body of three dimensional figurative paper sculptures combined with wood and construction materials representing the interment of people in the concentration camps during the Holocaust. Strips of mold-infected papers symbolize the striped uniforms that were worn. The works remind us that these were once vibrant healthy people who were brutalized and killed in the concentration camps. Available for purchase and a free PDF download at Blurb.

Memorials Going Forward

Now, we anticipate the end of the pandemic. After such an extended period of massive loss of life and having been denied opportunities to process grief surrounded by loved ones, I see a new role for artists as “grief facilitators/memorial creators” emerging.

Coincidentally, the LA Department of Cultural Affairs has recognized the need for post-Covid memorials, which have been deferred during the year’s shut down. They see this as a modern day WPA-like program offering artists support for doing this kind of healing work.

The post World War II WPA (Work Projects Administration) found opportunities for artists working in traditional media such as murals and public works, but many of today’s artists see a much broader spectrum of options for self expression and are motivated toward social good and providing a benefit to the community. They not only apply their skills in unconventional contexts, but also command a wide spectrum of non-traditional tools. It is these multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary artists with a range of skill sets who can produce meaningful work for families seeking closure from the loss of a loved one and the ceremonial aspects that once provided it.

The WPA artists produced murals and public amenities that continue to enrich community life today. Just as the WPA was a job creation strategy for artists after the Depression, I believe this first program of the DCA to “make work” for artists post-pandemic, will open the doors for broader community benefits. According to a SNAAP survey: opening more avenues for artists to craft a “work” of collaboration with citizens is clearly the wave of the future.

Besides me, Jack holding Certificates of Commendation/Recognition from Mayor Kevin Maceown of the City of Santa Monica and State Senator Ben Allen. Mick Flaum, who conducted life-drawing labs at the Workshop and then at Jack’s home after the Worksho… — Besides me, Jack holding Certificates of Commendation/Recognition from Mayor Kevin Maceown of the City of Santa Monica and State Senator Ben Allen. Mick Flaum, who conducted life-drawing labs at the Workshop and then at Jack’s home after the Workshop was closed. Sheila Pinkle, a prominent LA artist and teacher, who produced her Master’s Thesis work at the Workshop.

Jack Duganne (1942-2020)

One of my personal losses this year and also one of the great losses to the arts community in our City was the death of Jack Duganne, founding director of Workshop, i.e. and innovative leader in digital technologies for art. Jack was my mentor beginning in 1973 when I joined the Workshop and learned silkscreen printing from him. He passed away Easter morning while we were in the midst of arranging a commemorative event at the Santa Monica Library and just as the City went into its first shutdown.

I am working with his family to arrange an appropriate memorial according to their wishes once we can open a dialog with the City of Santa Monica and this is what stimulated my present reflections on Memorials.

I think Cities and Municipalities are going to have to grapple with the unfinished business of catching up on memorials after things open up again. Because of the very public circumstances of these losses and the long deferral of the normal process of grieving, I think we need a new perspective on how these memorials can be most effective.

Perhaps there is a way to link private memorials with the use of public spaces and ephemeral art such as film, dance and music as a way of sustaining memory that has been deferred for so long. I believe there is an on-going role for artists-in-residence (perhaps with the Dept. of Rec and Parks or public schools) to provide assistance in developing memorials, utilizing public space and providing creative services to mourners by putting together events and memorializing the experience of images, artifacts, sound, lighting, dance, etc. to help people go through a meaningful grieving process. 

Memorials produced and recorded through these post-Covid collaborations could be scheduled for airing by family and friends at local public parks or school auditoriums on the anniversaries of the deaths. In this way, a memorial is sustained without taking up real estate and requiring ongoing care. All those who remember the departed can gather together with new family members to pass on the memories of the deceased. As we say in Jewish tradition: “The departed whom we now remember still live on in the acts of goodness they performed and in the hearts of those who cherish their memory.” These memorial modalities can create as well as sustain those memories.

Sandy BleiferFebruary 5, 2021activism

ART & ACTION: Closing the Gap

Holding a piece created in support of opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline

In working on the seventh of my PAPER series of monographs entitled PAPER: Social Practice, I came face to face with the recognition – a long time coming – that my extracurricular activities in business, teaching and community activism were not disconnected from my process-based art practice and were, in fact, an essential part of it.

I spent over 15 years beginning in 1996 engaged in the revitalization of the Historic Core of downtown, Los Angeles. I acquired a real estate broker license and opened DownTown LA Realty in order to implement a re-tenanting and redevelopment of architectural icons and historic neighborhoods, dedicating my efforts to leverage the rich inventory of architectural landmark properties in support of the entrepreneurial and creative spirit befitting the heart of Los Angeles. I developed a vision for the reuse (new tenants and owner/custodians) of these aging architectural gems that would dynamically change all of downtown…and it did. (My papers from this period are archived in the University of Southern California’s Los Angeles collection.)

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Expanding my artistic vocabulary, I turned to photography to produce a collection of carefully framed elements of these buildings which I used to inspire those who had long disregarded the area: Downtown Up and Bradbury Building.

When I did return to studio practice full time (around 2012), I continued along the familiar lines of my formal inquiries, incorporating temporal subjects such as the refugee crisis, the climate crisis and social injustice – continually pushing the envelope of what paper and paper manipulation techniques can do to express them.

Then, in 2016, with the election of Donald Trump, I felt we were at the brink of an existential crisis. I could barely keep up with the daily revelations of his obscene abuses of power long enough to develop an artistic vocabulary for them. For the first Women’s March in downtown LA, the day after the inauguration, I quickly put together a window display in the storefront of a friend’s gallery. There was no time to agonize about the manipulation of materials, methods, and techniques – instead I employed a process outside my usual way of working.

Now, with COVID-19 upon us, it has hammered home for me the systemic inadequacies in our country: income inequality and lack of opportunity for upward mobility, ethnicity and gender-based suppression, lack of health care for all, an unstable food supply, growing climate crisis, the abuses of wealth, power and influence that had been sustained even under more benevolent leadership, were now exposed. As an artist, I had to consider if I had the tools to respond with the speed and to the scale that these subjects deserved.

During quarantine, I paused to reflect on other times I have been called into action, artistically, to address an urgent concern. I took a fresh look at work I produced that had been atypical for me and the methods I employed at the time.

Years ago, when going through a personal family crisis, I found expression in the Crucifixion Series, literally exposing myself. This first self portrait in this series served as a point of reference for the Angels, (available as a monograph).

In an early effort to augment my technical toolbox, I produced a video and an interactive installation for my open studio event on the Venice Art Walk of 2014: A Post-Apocalyptic Memorial

click to view video — *click to view* *video*

Perhaps, these were all seeds for more spontaneous and involving formats.

In order to bring my art practice closer to the demands of my conscience, I decided to challenge myself by accepting requests to produce work that was typically outside my norm. In 2019, Juri Kohl, Founder and President of ViCA (Venice Institute of Contemporary Art) and a champion of Venice artists, asked me to participate in a History of Venice exhibition. The challenge for me was to create a narrative around a historical event – my community project to save the Venice Walkstreets from demolition – that was not only informative but that was also an art piece.

*Venice Walkstreets, on display at the History of Venice exhibit at Beyond Baroque, 2019*

Most recently, during the pandemic quarantine, I received a request to do an art piece for a project of the Jewish Women’s Theatre, Los Angeles called Holy Sparks: Celebrating 50 Years of Women in the Rabbinate.

I decided to try to stretch my vocabulary once again to produce a work about the first woman rabbi in England, Jackie Tabick. My research took me to her TED talk where, like many rabbis, she interjects a parable about a man’s inadvertent good deeds and his acts interpreted by the rabbi as the man’s deeds functioning as the hands of G*d. Her bio also speaks to her interfaith work in the refugee community. So, I decided to bring together these two themes while experimenting with combining some techniques: a new photo transfer method where I selected a compelling newspaper photograph of Syrian refugees and printed it onto an art paper with a preexisting image (clouds on a sky). In order to push the work into the viewer’s space, I created a three dimensional element by employing a casting technique I had used many years ago.

I am hoping, in these kinds of explorations, to stretch my reach and develop a visual vocabulary to meet the fast changing situation on the ground.

Sandy BleiferSeptember 13, 2020activism

COMMEMORATING: The 75th Anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bombings

There was to have been a well-orchestrated commemoration centered at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics when the athletic events would have been halted at the exact moments of the bombs dropping on Hiroshima August 6th 75 years ago and on Nagasaki on August 9th. My dear friend, Richard Fukuhara, had been orchestrating a ringing of bells throughout the country at those two moments in coordination with the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki until his untimely death last year. The global pandemic has forced the cancellation of the Olympics and prevents the full range of public programs planned throughout the world. This occasion must not pass by unnoticed.

This is also the 25th Anniversary of my Hiroshima/Nagasaki Memorial Project that I pursued to coincide with the auspicious 50th Anniversary of the bombings. The project was organized around an exhibition of my 35 paper sculptures reflecting the human devastation of the bombing. It garnered broad support of government and community organizations in the US and Japan, making possible exhibitions and programs without any major financial support. The exhibition was shown at LA Artcore in Los Angeles and traveled to the University of Hawaii, UC Berkeley, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Osaka with community and educational programs, dance performances and related arts events at each venue.

I invite you to view the contemporaneous YouTube video of my walk through of the exhibition:

Click on image to watch video — *Click on image to* *watch video*

The Iona Pear Dance Theater (now Iona Contemporary Dance Theatre) under the direction of Cheryl Flaharty, produced an amazing interactive Butoh-influenced performance inspired by the exhibition:

As a fundraiser for the traveling exhibition, I produced a limited edition folding screen in handmade paper packaged in a Japanese style portfolio. I still have 2 sets left at $750.00 each. Please contact me if you’re interested.

I have never been content to simply produce artwork, but to find vehicles whereby I can bring the art into a context whereby it can stimulate reflection and change on broad social issues. The Hiroshima/Nagasaki Memorial Project is part of this Social Practice.

I am always seeking to build a wider community around art and social issues. To learn more about my art, visit my artist website.

(PAPER: Social Practice book available for purchase here)

Sandy BleiferAugust 4, 2020activism

GOING LIVE: An Artist a Day

I’d like to invite you to watch a video recently posted as part of An Artist a Day project, a daily 15-minute, live, online show hosted by Dr. Chris Lee (via Zoom) and featuring artists from around the world speaking of their work, their process, and their responses to the current state of things.

All programs are archived on the YouTube channel: An Artist a Day.

In my interview, I share some work as I speak about my focus on paper as a medium of artistic expression, my thought processes and methodology, and my concerns on issues of the environment, social justice, and coping with the pandemic.

If you are interested in participating in An Artist a Day as an artist, you can sign up here.

Sandy BleiferJuly 5, 2020activism

MUSINGS: Process, Materials, and Inspiration

I first planned this blog to deal with a range of art topics and practices. Then the current state of affairs unfolded and so many more pressing issues came to the forefront. Issues like food insecurity, inequitable employment practices, the health safety net, the need for a reinvigorated science/medical sector with global cooperation and more. And as I sit in quarantine, I once again reflect on the intersection of my art practice with my social concerns, and have decided to focus this blog at this time on my behind the scenes process, including the global issues that often inform and inspire my work. I thought it might be of interest to send out periodic insights into work in progress as it bubbles up.

This post traces the origin and uses of the kimono shape as canvas/sculpture.

My working process has always involved collecting photographs of images (mountains, the ocean, walls, etc.) that can be translated by printing, collage and other techniques through paper. During the wars in the Middle East and the ensuing refugee crises, I began collecting photographs from the LA and NY Times because of their compelling human drama. They were far afield from the subjects of my past work.

I have also collected handmade and art papers just waiting for the right subject to animate them. In recent years, I have added single-use plastic to my paper collection out of a growing concern about pollution and the replacement of recyclable paper by plastic in our daily lives.

As I was trying to figure out how to incorporate these new elements into my work, I was in the midst of preparing to relinquish my collection of Japanese Kimono and Haori and they were being appraised as “vehicles” of fine art. Like the Kimono, which often depicts Japanese life and themes, my kimono, comprised of the photographs encased in plastic bags, became a shaped canvas for my imagery. See the whole series and how it fits in with the rest of my work in my publication: PAPER: Social Practice

As I presented this series, Plastic Bag Kimono at Fathom Gallery downtown, I produced a printed and hand finished multiple intended to raise funds for the Standing Rock Sioux who were fighting the intrusion of their lands by the Dakota Pipeline. Using Megan Louella Schoenbachler’s photographs, the inside and the outside of the kimono creates a dynamic juxtaposition.

I did apply some of my Ikebana Series imagery to actual wearable kimono-like garments, available for purchase.

vida Screen Shot 2020-05-28 at 12.12.51 PM.png

I still have many photographs I want to use and have been looking for other ways to present them. I purchased a collection of handmade papers from Hiromi Paper International that I want to respect in a work and not just cannibalize them as I do other papers. This is what I have been thinking about:

I will try to send out monthly updates of works and series as they evolve. Hopefully, I’ll have these 5 kimono to show you.

Also, I do have an Artist Website (SandyBleifer.com), where you can see a compendium of finished artwork throughout my long career.

Sandy BleiferMay 28, 2020activism

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