Design and organizing for a climate justice procession

Our Wake Up Call was a climate justice procession in Providence, RI highlighting the environmental injustices that have a disproportionate effect on BIPOC and low income communities.

Given the isolation and darkness felt in these pandemic times, my collaborator Jessica Brown and I saw an urgent need for collective joy. We view music and dance as the best recipe to get people activated, interested, and motivated to produce change. We brought together several community groups including: Clam Jam Marching Band (an all womxn’s marching band) the Glitter Goddesses (a BIPOC queer performance group), local government officials and more.

We considered accessibility in our design. Our procession had several stops so people who couldn’t join the walk or go the full distance could still participate. Location is critical to the stories we tell as designers. We started at the former homestead of the Slave Ship Sally’s commander, reckoning with its egregious place in the community’s history. We danced through the Chad Brown affordable housing community where we would do call and response shout outs with residents about the future they want for themselves and their children. We went to the state capital where we heard from community leader Zuli Vidal. Finally, we ended at the VOTE mural created by BIPOC artists with Avenue Concept where state congresswoman Liana Cassar spoke about the important of voting.

We had shirts where people could handwrite the kind of future they want and gave out custom masks and tambourines so people could play along with us. The joy and call for change was emanating from the streets.

Commissioned by TED Countdown and Fine Acts

fineacts.co/countdown

Concept: Sarah Sandman, Jessica Brown
Design: Sarah Sandman, Jessica Brown, Wide Awakes
Music: Clam Jam Brass Band
Dance: The Glitter Goddesses
Partners: Pronk, Wide Awakes, House of Glitter

Brick x Brick is a public design project that builds human “walls” against misogyny.

During the silent wall performances, participants wear brick-patterned jumpsuits adorned with colorful brick patches bearing statements of misogynistic violence made by Donald Trump.

Brick x Brick has been performed in 17 states across the United States. An instructional design manual accompanies kits of jumpsuits—as a lending library—so that individual communities can build their own human walls.

A Brick x Brick jumpsuit and corresponding stories are currently on view at the New York Historical Society.

Concept: Sarah Sandman
Design: Sarah Sandman, Andrea Lauer, Joey Foster Ellis
Creative Strategy: Kyra Gaunt, Nikki Juen
Community organizing: Sarah Sandman, Nikki Juen, Andrea Lauer

brickxbrick.org

Campaign Media Highlights

July 14, 2017

THE NEW YORKER: The Activists Who Are Staging Acts of Protest Inside Trump Tower

HYPERALLERGIC: Artists Stage Protest Performances in Trump Tower

THE INDYPENDENT: A New Hotbed of The Resistance: Trump Tower’s Fifth Floor

CRAIN'S NEW YORK BUSINESS: For The President's Birthday, New Yorkers Protest Funding Cuts

January 21, 2017

The New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/sarah-larson/scenes-from-the-womens-march-on-washington

Kentwired:
http://www.kentwired.com/latest_updates/article_ac889e92-0ca9-5115-9557-ef7611e3b449.html

CNN: (pics 2 and 4)
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/21/politics/one-million-marchers-outside-washington/index.html

NBC News: (at :52)
http://www.nbcnews.com/video/women-s-march-on-washington-highlights-859920963895

Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/heres-what-we-saw-at-the-womens-march-on-washington_us_58840cc6e4b070d8cad317e8

Business Insider:
http://www.businessinsider.com/stunning-photos-womens-march-washington-dc-2017-1/#people-held-each-other-in-laughter-and-in-tears-27

Pre-election

Fusion:
http://fusion.net/story/347950/how-women-can-stop-trump/

Revelist:
http://www.revelist.com/politics/brickxbrick-trump-voter-registration/4878

Brooklyn News 12:
http://brooklyn.news12.com/news/artists-sarah-sandman-and-andrea-lauer-design-anti-donald-trump-jumpsuits-1.12311793

STL Public Radio:
http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/wash-u-debate-free-expression-tape-talk-down-ballot-concerns

Ted Fellows Blog:
https://fellowsblog.ted.com/ladies-wanna-stick-it-to-trump-heres-how-ccd71217c1ed#.a52d7vzen

Hyperallergic:
http://hyperallergic.com/332358/mexican-architects-imagine-trumps-border-wall-as-a-pink-homage-to-luis-barragan/

A visual campaign for the New York City Millions March on December 13, 2015.

Hostos Hands Up was a collaboration of the Black Studies Unit and the Media Design Programs of Hostos Community College. Our group was scholar activists acting in the tradition of W.E.B. DuBois and Eugenio Maria de Hostos.

Hostos Hands Up has displayed work at the RESPOND exhibition at Smack Mellon gallery in Brooklyn New York and is currently on view at the Museum of the City of New York.

Concept: Sarah Sandman
Design: Sarah Sandman and Fall 2015 Hostos Typography Class
Copy: Dr Weldon Williams and Fall 2015 Hostos Black Studies Class
Videography: Varnell Pritchett

Bike Write was a performative typography project in the streets of Providence, RI.

A group of fifty cyclists participated in a bike ride supporting the election of President Barack Obama. The group followed a typographic route which spelled “Yes We Can”. The ride went through the East Side, Downtown and theSouth Side uniting three distinct neighborhoods. Participants were visually united by yellow t-shirts.The former mayor of Providence, and now U.S.Congressman joined the ride.

Concept: Sarah Sandman
Design: Sarah Sandman
Community Organizing: Sarah Sandman
Silk Screening: Julia Gualtieri

A cross-country cycling and art exchange project.

The Gift Cycle was designed as a circulatory gift economy connecting artists across the United States. Gifts of art were biked by Sarah Sandman and Melissa Small from local artists of one community to local artists of the next community en route. The trip started in Providence, RI and ended in Seattle, WA. Art exchange events took place in towns along the way. At these events, artists brought a piece of art and exchanged it for a piece of art. No money involved. Just gifts. The art from Seattle was brought back to Providence and given to the original contributors, completing the cycle.

Concept: Sarah Sandman
Design: Sarah Sandman
Community organizing: Sarah Sandman, Melissa Small

Experiential design for a community arts fundraising dinner.

FEAST (Funding Emerging Art with Sustainable Tactics) was a recurring public dinner designed to use community-driven financial support to democratically fund new and emerging art makers in Brooklyn, NY.

At each FEAST, patrons gave a $20 donation for which they received supper and a ballot. Diners spent the evening reviewing a series of project proposals and conversing with the artists behind each idea. Attendees cast a vote for their favorite proposal, and by the end of the night, the artist who garnered the most votes is awarded a grant comprised of that evening’s door money.

For the dinners, we created interactive experiences such as photobooths to engage strangers in dialogue.

Collaborators: Sarah Sandman, Jeffy Hnlicka, Matt Cassity, Jenn Neilsen, Molly O’rourke, David Michael Perez, Lola Sadai, Jessica Williamson, Kyle Dollinger, Sarah Suarez, August Heffner, Willow Robin, Kelly Rakowski, Brock Shorno, Mary Speaker and Bill Hanley

We Show Up was a participatory workshop at the TED Women 2018 Conference

The title of the TED Women 2018 conference was “Showing Up.” In designing a workshop for the conference, I leaned into the theme to find out why people “show up.” I worked with Kelley Surun to create scarves printed with the phrase “We Show Up.” We then invited participants to block print phrases, why they, themselves, “show up.” Phrases included WE SHOW UP: because how else will anything get done, because Black girls matter, because the time is now and more. The scarves provided a unifying visual while individuals were able to customize them with their own values. Collaboration and joy were visible at the workshop.

Concept: Sarah Sandman
Design: Sarah Sandman, Kelley Surun
Fabrication: Sudnya Schroff
Copy: Shoham Arad

Experiential design for a community survey in New York City.

Bruce Mau Design invited Melissa Small and I to design a way to represent the current cultural climate of 2009. Putting our own twist on the prompt, Melissa and I created a traveling popup “restaurant” where we would perform as servers. We designed surveys to look like menus, asking the public their thoughts on issues such as housing, the arts, food access and more. An online dinner party was created in conjunction to talk further about the issues highlighted in the survey.

Concept: Sarah Sandman and Melissa Small
Design: Sarah Sandman and Melissa Small

Party game designed to get strangers engaging with one another.

Every attendee receives an oversize scrabble necklace. Soon strangers are spelling words together in a photo booth. Want to be ambitious and spell “exquisite”? You better find that stranger with the letter X.

Interactive community puzzle for the Wassiac Project’s Winter Benefit.

The Wassiac Project is home to a year-round artist residency program, art exhibitions, festivals, and art education programs for kids, teens, and adults. For their Winter benefit, I created an interactive puzzle of the organizations main building, a seven-story mill converted into an art exhibition and education space. Party goers received necklaces at the entrance made of a single puzzle piece. Working collaboratively, attendees could solve the puzzle by building a model of the mill together.

A new flag for today, as freedom is not a guarantee for all people in this country.

During the three month period between March 13, 2020 and June 13, 2020, Google Trends' analytics show that "SpaceX" was searched for 2.5 times as often as "Breonna Taylor." These data findings reveal that our society pays more attention to the privatization of space exploration by a white man (aka Elon Musk, who describes his efforts as part of "colonizing" Mars) than to the murder of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who was shot by police in her home during a botched execution of a warrant. The disparities in where we direct our attention have dire consequences. According to NASA, a round-trip ticket to the International Space Station on the SpaceX Crew Dragon would cost about $58 million dollars. Justice has no price tag, and Breonna's murderers are still free.

I designed this piece entitled, “Our attention has consequences” for the exhibition MESS (Marker Emblem Symbol Signal) curated by Adam Eckstrom, director of ArtsForArtists, and on display at Standard Space during the Summer 2020. Artists included in the exhibition are: Chloe Bass, Natalie Baxter, Daniel Bejar, Mel Chin, Pamela Council, DARNstudio, Ghost of a Dream, Vandana Jain, Kirsten Hassenfeld, Sarah Sandman, David Scher, Dread Scott, and Sanne Vassen

Artist: Sarah Sandman
Title: “Our attention has consequences”
Date: June 2020
Media: silver nylon, black acrylic ink, gold embroidered patch
Size: 25"w x 15”h
Typeface: Martin by Tré Seals of Vocal Type Co
Fabrication: Julia Gualtieri (silkscreening and sewing) and Brooklyn Stitch (patches).

Prototype design for an interactive sculpture for the Appalachian Trail.

The Appalachian Oracle is made for hikers of the Appalachian Trail. Using a tower with spinning coded language, hikers can leave secret messages behind for the next hiker. The recipient of the messages is invited to make a rubbing and bring it with them in a bottled necklace.

Custom tarot card deck design to spark creative ideas for community engagement.

I (issue) D (do-ers) E (environment) A (action)

IDEA was a tarot project to promote FEAST (Funding Emerging Art With Sustainable Tactics) at the New Museum’s 2011 Festival of Ideas. Tarot readings for visitors would reveal potential FEAST proposal ideas The project was then iterated upon with Jill Peterson for a workshop at ASU Design School. For example, one reading yielded an IDEA for a meal at a subway station for landlords talking about gentrification.

Community dance for instant public joy.

Diamond Dance was a community dance project invented by dancer, Lola Sadai. In 2010, Jeffy Hnlicka, Matt Cassity, Jenn Nielsen and I took the dance cross country on the Empire Builder train to Portland, OR. The dance is easily learnable and the public can “tag out” and jump in at any point.

Prototype design for typographic bicycle tires.

Leave Behind is a project for converting bike tires into “typographic puddle stamps.” By using water as the medium, the project leaves no trace and highlights cycling as a form of transportation with zero emissions.