Sandra Vista
Born: Arizona 1952
U of Az 1974-76 (Art)
San Diego State University 1977-78 (BA Art)-&
California Single Subject Teaching Credential 1979 (Art)
California State University, Long Beach 1982 (MFA-Painting)
For more than 45 years, since Sandra started her art degree at the University of Arizona, she has considered herself a painter. Her MFA at California State University, Long Beach (1982), was in "painting."
However, she has been working on more labor-intensive mixed-media works for the past twenty-plus years.
Since she was a kid, Sandra was an undeclared Dadaist, becoming a devotee of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, which began in her early college years. Having limited access to art materials in my childhood, she used everyday objects and homemade art materials for her artwork. Sandra remembers making her first collage at fourteen before being introduced to "collage.”
Mark Rothko was Sandra's first painting inspiration. She was in middle school when her English teacher Mrs. Edith Morgan, took her 7th-grade class to the University of Arizona Art Museum. She had never been to an art museum before this field trip.
Seeing a Rothko painting of sea foam greens was a true epiphany and a life changer. That was the first time she remembers wanting to become an artist and a painter. Sandra's paintings still begin with a horizon line reminiscent of Rothko's color field paintings.
Sandra has been linked with the Pattern and Decoration Movement from the late 1970s and 1980s and was also influenced by the Memphis Design Group at the same time. Some of her painting instructors from San Diego State (BA Art 1978) were painted with bold colors and patterns related to these movements. When she began her graduate program at California State University, Long Beach (1979-82), her paintings were more gestural brush strokes with a grid as a framework. As she started to develop my painting style, Sandra began to emulate the inclusion of stripes as created by her instructor Pat Cauley. He used a striping tool to create stripes on a canvas. Sandra uses the traditional masking tape for her stripes. My paintings also included pattern designs derived from Japanese emblem motifs, Indian tapestries, and Native American weaving and pottery designs. Also, she was influenced by local pattern painters such as Miriam Schapiro, Cynthia Watson, and Kim McConnell. Stuart Davis, Jasper Johns, and Frank Stella were also influential in their use of patterns, especially Frank Stella and his Exotic Bird Series.
Sandra's mixed-media work provides meditative relief and a relationship with the feeling of home, the beauty of the "prosaic" and domestic arts. Stringing multi-colored beads together to apply to dried gourds helps to put her in a "creative zone" that is a welcome element while making art. Art can be hard work; there is a form of relief in stringing and pinning beads to surfaces with paint and acrylic gel medium.
The strings of beads are considered three-dimensional patterns of color in space. The beaded gourds are still a form of painting to Sandra.
The zipper tab series also provides meditative relief, and the work's labor-intensive quality creates work with a definite beginning and end related to the size of the panel format. The zipper tabs fit into her Dadaist influence of using everyday objects as art forms.
Also, the materials have biographical symbolism related to Sandra's father's livelihood as a fabric and notions buyer and her maternal grandfather's profession as a tailor. Her use of the zipper tabs is a new interpretation of some of her family's professions.
Ultimately, Sandra needs to include Christo as one of her ongoing influences. While she was at San Diego State (1976-1979), she was introduced to Christo at an exhibit he had at the La Jolla Contemporary Art Museum. He spoke at the museum and presented a documentary of "The Running Fence," as well as his wrapped object pieces. Like Rothko, Christo helped to define the way she creates art. His abstraction of everyday objects, by wrapping them in fabric and tying them with rope, made a significant impression on her. As she continues to wrap everyday objects with strings of beads and dip objects in paint and gel medium, she thinks of Christo and his definition of abstraction.
U of Az 1974-76 (Art)
San Diego State University 1977-78 (BA Art)-&
California Single Subject Teaching Credential 1979 (Art)
California State University, Long Beach 1982 (MFA-Painting)
For more than 45 years, since Sandra started her art degree at the University of Arizona, she has considered herself a painter. Her MFA at California State University, Long Beach (1982), was in "painting."
However, she has been working on more labor-intensive mixed-media works for the past twenty-plus years.
Since she was a kid, Sandra was an undeclared Dadaist, becoming a devotee of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, which began in her early college years. Having limited access to art materials in my childhood, she used everyday objects and homemade art materials for her artwork. Sandra remembers making her first collage at fourteen before being introduced to "collage.”
Mark Rothko was Sandra's first painting inspiration. She was in middle school when her English teacher Mrs. Edith Morgan, took her 7th-grade class to the University of Arizona Art Museum. She had never been to an art museum before this field trip.
Seeing a Rothko painting of sea foam greens was a true epiphany and a life changer. That was the first time she remembers wanting to become an artist and a painter. Sandra's paintings still begin with a horizon line reminiscent of Rothko's color field paintings.
Sandra has been linked with the Pattern and Decoration Movement from the late 1970s and 1980s and was also influenced by the Memphis Design Group at the same time. Some of her painting instructors from San Diego State (BA Art 1978) were painted with bold colors and patterns related to these movements. When she began her graduate program at California State University, Long Beach (1979-82), her paintings were more gestural brush strokes with a grid as a framework. As she started to develop my painting style, Sandra began to emulate the inclusion of stripes as created by her instructor Pat Cauley. He used a striping tool to create stripes on a canvas. Sandra uses the traditional masking tape for her stripes. My paintings also included pattern designs derived from Japanese emblem motifs, Indian tapestries, and Native American weaving and pottery designs. Also, she was influenced by local pattern painters such as Miriam Schapiro, Cynthia Watson, and Kim McConnell. Stuart Davis, Jasper Johns, and Frank Stella were also influential in their use of patterns, especially Frank Stella and his Exotic Bird Series.
Sandra's mixed-media work provides meditative relief and a relationship with the feeling of home, the beauty of the "prosaic" and domestic arts. Stringing multi-colored beads together to apply to dried gourds helps to put her in a "creative zone" that is a welcome element while making art. Art can be hard work; there is a form of relief in stringing and pinning beads to surfaces with paint and acrylic gel medium.
The strings of beads are considered three-dimensional patterns of color in space. The beaded gourds are still a form of painting to Sandra.
The zipper tab series also provides meditative relief, and the work's labor-intensive quality creates work with a definite beginning and end related to the size of the panel format. The zipper tabs fit into her Dadaist influence of using everyday objects as art forms.
Also, the materials have biographical symbolism related to Sandra's father's livelihood as a fabric and notions buyer and her maternal grandfather's profession as a tailor. Her use of the zipper tabs is a new interpretation of some of her family's professions.
Ultimately, Sandra needs to include Christo as one of her ongoing influences. While she was at San Diego State (1976-1979), she was introduced to Christo at an exhibit he had at the La Jolla Contemporary Art Museum. He spoke at the museum and presented a documentary of "The Running Fence," as well as his wrapped object pieces. Like Rothko, Christo helped to define the way she creates art. His abstraction of everyday objects, by wrapping them in fabric and tying them with rope, made a significant impression on her. As she continues to wrap everyday objects with strings of beads and dip objects in paint and gel medium, she thinks of Christo and his definition of abstraction.
Sandra Vista
Aurelio or Camplittle, 2010
Acrylic on MM Zipper Tabs, and Gel Medium
24 x 84 Inches
$18,000
Aurelio or Camplittle, 2010
Acrylic on MM Zipper Tabs, and Gel Medium
24 x 84 Inches
$18,000
Sandra Vista
Museum Horizon-Horizone Museo, 2019 MM Zipper Tabs, Gel Medium 96 x 12 Inches $15,000 |
Sandra Vista
Intentional totems, 2022-23 MM Zipper Tabs, Gel Medium 54 x 20 Inches $13,500 |