about: open air studio spacetime
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
— Albert Einstein
“Sometimes when you’re looking for one thing, you find something completely different and unexpected”.
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
open air studio spacetime is a “home” site (founded in 2006) for creating art and engaging in timely matters through the lens of history-making (Note 1) and remaking itself within the continuum of space and time. A laboratory for experimentation during times of critical planetary change in climate, society, and culture. Sandrow’s intention to present the natural history of everyday life, while regenerating discourse on nature, art, culture, and history is evident in her daily events and actions on site in the Shinnecock Hills. Issues of identity, gender, science, and the politics of power and myth are also at play, representing a sustainable collaboration with the more-than-human-realm reflecting the inter-relationships of living organisms to one another and their physical environment.
“Duchamp delighted in the fact that “Large Glass” shattered while being transported. The jagged cracks further confounded and fragmented the object's chance encounter with the real world. Rather than offering an escape into a story or environment, the environment is framed and focused by the work of art, and its story is ever subject to change, like the physical state of the artwork itself.” (Note 2)
The genesis was a Chance Encounter (Surrealist doctrine of objective chance) with a Padovana white cockerel (March 28, 2006) in woods (designated Shinnecock Indian Contact Period Village Fort Critical Environmental Area within Cultural Resources Protection Overlay District) inhabited by First Peoples 14,000 years ago. He followed her home (Note 3): soon after Sandrow followed the white cockerel across the road, to the Shinnecock Hills latterly preserved (2008) in hand with their descendants, The Shinnecock Indian Nation.
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Sandrow embraced the riddle “Why did the chicken cross the road?”: possibly a “folly”, for the cockerel Shinnecock, named for where we met, to be my guide, muse.”
The fabric of time and space - Art in the Embassy, Jakarta
Portrait of a Chicken as an Egg (Candled) within A Golden Rectangle open air studio Shinnecock Hills spacetime
…the problem about the egg and the hen, which of them came first, was dragged into our talk, a difficult problem that gives investigators much trouble. And Sullaa my comrade said that with a small problem, as with a tool, we were rocking loose a great and heavy one, that of the creation of the world…
Plutarch Table Talk Moralia 120 AD
And like the creation narrative in the Garden of Eden, snakes appeared where two apple trees sprouted, taking root in her living art installation where Shinnecock and his family flock find shelter. Eastern Garten Snake in the open air studio Shinnecock Hills spacetime
Shane Weeks, member of The Shinnecock Tribal Nation
Hope Sandrow on the Shinnecock Hills by photo credit Ambrose Clancy
William Merritt Chase with students on Shinnecock Hills by Albert Chittenden
At the time, the subjects of Sandrow’s study Untitled Observations spacetime (2001 - 2007) were the stars including our solar system, and the study of Galileo Galilei in relationship to our beliefs and practices including contemporary events such as 911 that Sandrow witnessed. The alignment of the five planets (pictured r) Untitled Observations May 15 commencing 1:30am Self Portrait spacetime Conjunction of Five Planets) and the appearance of white roosters (Note 4) that are interpreted by some cultures as portends of things to come. This is why, the role of chance (or destiny?) happenings was timely. Remarkably, the cockerel’s feathered crest resembled that of the North American Indian's Eastern Woodland headdress regalia (pictured above). And, equally remarkable, the city of Padua was home, for the Padovana and Galileo.
open air studio Shinnecock Hills spacetime is a platform evoking a critical discourse about “now”; the “everyday” for Sandrow as an artist in residence in Shinnecock Hills as then (1891 -1914) plein-air painter William Merritt Chase (Note 5) that her project title shows hommage (2006). In 2020, she learned her Cottage/Studio “may be carriage house to William Merritt Chase” (Note 6). Chase founded the Shinnecock Summer School of Art (1891 - 1902), the most respected open-air painting school in the United States. He and his family also kept a flock of chickens, and his conservation efforts, memorialized in his landscape paintings of Shinnecock Hills, are rooted in Sandrow’s art practice merging art, life, social practice, and activism.
Sandrow’s artworks and installations are often outside the parameters of the “white cube”, and are composed of an interdisciplinary art practice exploring sociological and ecological effects of human domination on the natural world in the geologic times of the anthropocene. For example, the priority of economic prosperity over all else, that of, what is “valued” - has placed the Shinnecock Hills community, and the world at great risk, jeopardizing the health of ecosystems that provide clean air, water, and food. These projects proposed transformative - not transactional - change via the medium of the creative process, a process that is necessary to prevent further depletion of nature and the natural world. The trajectory of human development is paralleled by the chicken’s journey from jungles to forests, to farms and backyards (Note 7), and poultry farms, now considered markers within the transformation of the biosphere.
Unfolding in front of a lens through which she embraces chance, creates art encompassing the mediums of still, video, mixed media, sculpture, new media, and social practice existing through the bounds of overlapping disciplines. open air studio engages colleagues and the public in collaboration and dialogue considering the “place” of art and culture. This has led to proposals for companion open air studios in Bali and Komodo, Indonesia (Note 8): these exchanges reveal her commitment to local and global activism, and desire to connect eastern Long Island coastal communities to those whose existence also threatened by rising seas.
open air studio spacetime co-exists on multiple layers, displaying the relationships between the personal and public; Sandrow’s backyard to neighbors and those on the other side of the world. It is a 24/7 on-site practice sustained by ecological interrelationships. Including the micro and the macro: a hen's egg posed upright while candled resembles stars, moons, and planets. The process of laying an egg begins after light-sensitive cells behind the Hen’s eyes message her ovary to release an ovum into the egg yolk. Fertilized by sperm, coated by albumen as the egg travels through the oviduct. This creative process encompasses twenty-four hours; as the rotation of the earth on its axis
Note 1: The primary focus is Shinnecock Hills within the Shinnecock Indian Contact Period Village Fort Critical Environmental Area where open air studio is sited. A history documented in newspaper articles following LIRR service to the east end (realized 1869) after seizure (1859) of more than 4000 acres of land from The Shinnecock Indian Nation by the Town of Southampton. When women exercised their right to own property.
Note 2: Marcel Duchamp’s works of art had a profound impact on Sandrow as a young girl, the artist she is today.
Large Glass is the first work of art and Duchamp is the first artist that Sandrow recalls experiencing, at the Philadelphia Musem of Art. “Looking at Dada” Authors Sarah Ganz Blythe, Edward D. Powers, Cassandra Heliczer, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) 2006 page 14
Note 3: Sandrow encountered the white cockerel on hills within the former Colt Estate (1891 - 1946). Ownership on the maps is attributed to: William M. Colt (1894); M Colt (1902 and 1916), and William B. Colt (1916). An1891 deed named Jane Borrowe Colt, of which there were two: one married to E. Boudinot Colt, the second Jane B. was her sister, Mary, and her husband, Morgan G. Colt’s daughter Jennie aka Jane B. The Manor home burned to the ground (July 1951)... see what “remains”....what “lays bare”.
Note 4: The origins of the white Padovana cockerel, Shinnecock, were never known by Sandrow. At the time of his mysterious appearance, she went door to door but no neighbors claimed him, none of their flocks included his breed.
Note 5: Sandrow’s photographs and research accompanied by a hand-distributed petition (2002) persuaded the Town of Southampton’s Board to preserve public access to a bay beach pictured in Chase’s oil painting (1892) of his family “At the Seaside”.
Note 6: (2006) Sandrow titled this project in homage to Chase’s art practice: (2020) She was informed by neighbor John Hunt to read the Town of SOUTHAMPTON HISTORIC SURVEY that describes her Cottage/Studio: “The structure moved to current location”; “1891; it may be the carriage house to William Merritt Chase.” Illustrating that the world is full of chance (or destined?) happenings. “The William Merritt Chase Homestead is listed on the State and National Registers. It is a shingle-clad gambrel-roofed building with a Doric-columned porch. Attached is a shorter, smaller shingle-clad gambrel-roofed structure. It is generally accepted that Stanford White, of the architectural firm, McKim, Mead, & White, made sketches of this structure.”
Note 7: Her “backyard” includes a Carriage/Gatehouse: “The structure was moved to current location: Town of SOUTHAMPTON HISTORIC SURVEY (April 2014 ) Shinnecock Hills Multiple Resource District: “a small gambrel-roofed structure clad in wood shingles with dormers, twelve-over- twelve-light windows, and multiple additions. The structure likely dates to the early 20th century. Believed to be the former gatehouse for a larger property known as the Condon Estate (designed by Long Island architect Grosvenor Atterbury ca. 1906); it is also said to have been designed by Grosvenor Atterbury.
Note 8: Prisms of chance are Sandrow’s medium to study cultural and social history, the natural world of three coastal sites: Shinnecock Hills New York first inhabited 10,000 BC; Pacific Islands Komodo 11,000 BC and Bali (Silangjana)1,000,000 BC. And shared practices (on hold due to the global pandemic: open air studio Silangjana spacetime (Bali, with Sudipa Yasa Family and Kekur’s cockerel Rwa and Hen Bhineda) and open air studio Komodo spacetime (Sea of Flores with Mikel Albaran Valle) Indonesia. The collaborative offsite components of the Art in Embassies commission, The Fabric of Time and Space spacetime were permanently installed (2018) in the U.S. Embassy Jakarta. These are the lands where the Indonesian heritage chicken Kekur (Green Jungle Fowl) forage freely in backyards: common ground was found with Sandrow, her Padovana flock, and life as an artist.
Open air space time is realized with the continuing support of Agnes Gund; Sandrow’s collaborator in life Ulf Skogsbergh and inspired by her grandparents Pearl and Morris Liebman, grand-uncle William Zucker. This ongoing project is also made possible by Dorothy Lichtenstein, Lowery Stokes Sims and Elizabeth Kirrane (Museum of Arts and Design), George Tetzel, Virginia Shore and Claire D’Alba (Art in Embassies), Andrea Grover (Guild Hall), Tom Edmonds (Southampton History Museum), Drew and Susan S. Fine.
This artist project is fiscally sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts: tax-deductible donations can also support this ongoing project.