Collage Works by Sandy

Women of Art series
Women of Music series
Women of Books series

LARGE COLLAGE series

ABOUT SANDY OPPENHEIMER

Sandy Oppenheimer: A Life in Collage

Story by Margi Gomez

Sandy Oppenheimer sees her own life as a mixed media collage, and for good reason. She has worked as an improvisational actor, a food stylist, and a ceramic artist before coming to her chosen, and very unique brand of collage art. Sandy says her life has been full of “...challenges and discoveries, twists and turns.” All along the way, Sandy has stayed true to her own artistic vision, and has continually supported those around her in their artistic paths. “I began with watercolor,” she explains. “Any visual artist knows that watercolor is an unforgiving medium. After a year or so I had a stack of unsuccessful pieces. I happened to spend some time with a collagist friend, watching her work. I started to rework my mistakes, covering them with paper. Soon I was using paint and paper interchangeably. I was living in Italy at the time, and they were still wrapping things in all kinds of beautiful papers. I began to use paper as my palette.”

Sandy originally came to Mendocino for the ROP [regional occupational program]ceramics program back in the mid-eighties. She had been living in Provincetown, Massachusetts and was housesitting for an artist friend in Ukiah when the catalogue for the program arrived in the mail. Sandy's future husband, marble sculptor Jon Fisher, was working at the Mendocino Art Center at the time, along with his mother Judy Fisher, who was studying fiber arts.

“It was an exciting time at the Art Center,” Sandy remembers. “People like Josh de Weiss, Sam Katz, Leslie Campbell, and others were there as part of ROP Ceramics. More than ceramic techniques, I learned so much from them about dedication to the artistic pursuit.”

Within a few months, Jon was headed to Italy on a marble-buying trip to Carrara, the traditional marble quarry region, and he invited Sandy to come along. “Three months turned into twenty years!” Sandy chuckles. The two young artists set up housekeeping, and soon began to attract other foreigners who landed in the traditional marble region, where such artists as Michelangelo had famously quarried their stone. They raised their daughter Allegra in Pietrasanta, near Carrara, surrounded by art and artists.” I feel very blessed to have had that time. I felt that I was experiencing the Renaissance first hand. It was a visual feast.”

“We were in an industrial marble town,” Sandy explains. “Everyone was involved in the marble industry in some way. They had the machinery, the tools, and the know-how. We were able to learn the craft from the last of the traditional craftsmen, a dying breed. In a hundred years, they went from hundreds of marble studios and carvers to just a handful. And our studio became ‘Grand Central Station' for over three hundred foreign sculptors who came through town.”

Sandy had a large studio to herself in those days, and there among the marble workers she honed her craft while raising their daughter. She notes, “I think I gleaned a lot from my close proximity to so many sculptors. Sculptors have to think about drawing, about the line that creates the profile. Painters have to think about how they can create imaginary volume on a flat surface. There is something to be learned from both points of view. It's basically two different ways of approaching the same problem."

Friendship and hospitality come naturally to Sandy and John, who took well to the Italian lifestyle of family and friends. “The Italians work hard and they play hard,” says Sandy, “but there is always time for a good bottle of wine and a great meal with friends. The international community that we hosted and worked alongside was both fun and inspiring. It was a fantastic experience. The Italian landscape and the architecture are romantic, wonderful, and chaotic. The bureaucracy is very chaotic, and definitely not romantic. If you need to feel a sense of control, forget it. Italy runs at a different frequency.

“My daughter learned very early about diversity,” Sandy continues. “Yet she was the only non-Italian in her school. She was one of the reasons we decided on Mendocino. She told us that she wanted to live somewhere where there the kids would have parents ‘like us.' John's mom was ready to make us welcome in her home…so here we are. We loved Italy, but it was time to return to the States. We were sad to leave, and we still visit as often as we can.”

In 1996, Sandy was chosen as a paper artist in residence in Mino City, in the province of Gifu, Japan, along with four other paper artists, all European, for a three-month home-stay. “Being there was like a working dream. I lived with a local family, and the artists shared a large studio. All we were asked to do was to use their paper and participate in a group show. They make a paper called washi there, and it's the finest in the world. It's beautiful and strong, and it's made from mulberry.”

Sandy explains that just as she had found to be the case in Italy, in Gifu, the handmade paper studios, once so prevalent, were fast disappearing. “There were over two hundred studios a century ago in Gifu; now there are twenty.”

Overall Sandy says that she was “stunned” by the Japanese aesthetic and way of being. “Being there, I understood ink brush painting immediately. Mountains, all in gradations of gray, surround Mino City. It's incredible. I also began to understand haiku. You cross a bridge, and see a crane rising from the water, and it's a perfect moment.” She goes on, “Besides working at our individual disciplines, we attended a tea ceremony, met brush makers and scroll makers, and participated in the town's annual lantern festival.”

Sandy returned to Mino City last year for a ten-year anniversary of the project. “Many of the houses in the town hosted different artists, and the entranceways to some of the old homes were truly superb. The townspeople opened their homes and allowed the artists to create a gallery environment inside. It was great.”

Sandy's work spans a variety of themes, but her most ambitious series to date is her women's series, which features women who, often against all odds, came to excel in a number of fields, including visual arts, music, writing and the performing arts. She has completed forty-eight large pieces in the series; she plans seventy-two in all. “I intend to portray women in other fields as well, such as science, education, athletics, and peace activism. I hope to contribute images that will remind the women of the future of these women who have made such a difference in all of our lives.”

She, along with reading specialist Shelley de Angeles, recently received an A.D. Abramson Foundation grant, to create a portrait of Dana Gray to grace the hallways of the Dana Gray Elementary School in Fort Bragg. She set up a table in the hallway, and created the work as the children went to and from their classes, often stopping to observe and chat.

“I was in daily contact with the students,” she relates, “and I was really impressed by their attention and their questions. One of the kids that came by pointed out that it was right that I was doing the portrait out of paper, since Dana Gray had contributed to education in Fort Bragg when it was a lumbering town! I'd see a kid that maybe couldn't sit still, or couldn't make two and two equal four, and suddenly they could focus, because they were curious, then became engaged and inspired.”

Sandy goes on to say, “I think we could use a more holistic model in our educational system. For instance, I'd like to see history taught through the art, music, and dance of the times, and through the historic characters of the time. This kind of teaching brings history alive for the kids. Kids today have so many tests to take, and the teachers are so hard pressed. We lost something when education became so segmented.

“We all come into the world with creative energy and the need to create,” Sandy muses. Anyone who's raised a child knows that you give them a jar of buttons or a box of stones, they will begin arranging them in different ways, absorbed. You can see their pure joy of putting colors and shapes together.”

Sandy firmly believes that part of her job as artist is to inspire other artists. At the end of her time at Dana Gray, she planned a surprise collage workshop for the Dana Gray teachers, coordinated by Principal Mark Bibbens. “The teachers thought they were going to a workshop on standardized testing! They were happy to find themselves playing with paper and paste instead.”

When Sandy is asked about her dominating artistic influences, she responds without hesitation. “Modigliani for his incredible portraiture, Matisse, who even though he was laughed at, kept going, Frida Kahlo, for her tenacity and honesty, and Michelangelo, who did it all, drawing, painting, and architecture. He even nursed three different family members through cholera during the epidemic.”

Sandy adds, “I have to mention my friend and mentor, mixed-media collagist Stacy Spear Scott. She's an incredible artist, who turned me on to collage. I consider her the greatest living artist that I know.”

“Hopes for the future? After good health and peace on earth?” she laughs. “I hope to leave the world something of beauty. I hope to be able to impact the world in a positive way, through my work or with others. I'm interested in projects that have the capacity to improve people's lives. I hope to see my daughter and her generation living in a world where greed is replaced by generosity. I hope for peace, and, I would like to get my women's series launched into the larger world.”

No small tasks, but surely Sandy Oppenheimer will paste together her winning qualities of joy, courage, perseverance, and unwavering artistic vision, and create her most important collage of all: her own life.
Sandy's work has been published by Lilith Magazine, by the Syracuse Cultural Workers Calendars and for a number of book covers. She has been the recipient of a George Sugarman Foundation grant and the Ruth Chenon grant. She will be represented at the Artists in Residence Exhibit at the Mendocino Art Center, opening April 5. She will participate in two group shows in Fort Bragg, the legendary Friends Show at North Coast Artists opening First Friday, April 6, and at the recently opened Prentice Gallery in the fall. She will share a show of new work at the Mendocino Jewelry Studio with this writer, which will open with fanfare on Saturday, October 13, and her work is on permanent display at the Coastside Gallery on Albion Street in Mendocino.