Sandra DeSando and Heidi Curko have been working on a new collaborative project, and I visited with them in the studio space at ESKFF at Mana Contemporary to see the work in person. I've known Sandra for a few years now and have written about her in these pages before, but I had not had the chance to meet Heidi though I had heard about her and her work and this project they were doing together. Over the summer I had been helping Eileen Kaminsky the Founder of ESKFF to find Artists to work in the ESKFF studios. As I wrote in an earlier post, she was allowed by Mana Contemporary to have a small group of Artists in the space during this time, and I had recommended two who had been there in the months of July and August. Then one day when I was having a conversation through text and email and Instagram with the beautiful Artist Sandra DeSando, she mentioned that she had bee having a difficult time creating during this time, and I thought to ask her if she'd be interested in being a part of the ESKFF Residency. She had been a Resident a few years ago, but though it's not always possible for Residents to return, these times we are living in are so strange that I thought it might be possible if she was interested and if she had an idea for new work she'd like to create there. She asked me to let her think about it because there was a project she'd been discussing with the beautiful Artist Heidi Curko, and when she got back to me a few days later she described it. Heidi had contacted her to see if she might want to work on a collaboration, and though they have known and admired each other's work for some time, they weren't sure how to go about it. The idea of working together somehow through ESKFF was inspiring, and so I suggested it to Eileen Kaminsky. Eileen interviewed them together, and was so excited after her conversation with them that she invited them to work in the ESKFF studios for a fall Residency. And it was that work that I went to see.
It's exatraordinary work, with each one making their own personal and specific unique marks on paper and the other complimenting and replying to them. When I visited with them at ESKFF, they told me as we talked that it had taken them some time to come up with a way of working together that worked. At first they had though that they might be able to work at separate times and each had been creating basicially finished pieces that left the other nowhere to go except to create a new finished piece on top of what had been left. They thought those pieces were mistakes, but when I looked at them I thought they were beautiful. Other pieces began to develop over time as they found a rhythm of working together, sometimes apart and sometimes together in the space. They are all stunning, but the pieces that are perhaps the most moving to me are some of the fragments, the sketches and trial runs, the smaller pieces that they worked on as they began to explore discovering a new language and way of communicating through their art.
In times like these I feel we are somehow reminded how important it is to be human, and there are some things that are unique to us that are so valuable to others because of their ability to inspire and bring life to our every day existence. To say that an Artist is an explorer is part of what makes their work so powerful. It is in the exploration and the making of marks on paper that these two beautiful Artists have discovered a new language together, and it is one that tells a story that is universal, though also unique to them and all their own.
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