Sandra DeSando 

My artwork flows freely onto panel boards and paper. I spent decades devoted to the study of the beauty, the devastation, and the sacredness of the land. I make visual narratives to counter an active denial culture that asks us to look past the national and global damage that is right before our eyes and forget it exists. I make work so we can see through the bold lies, persuasive insinuations, and see beyond the sly, almost positive imagery that hides the danger before us. My artwork counters the lies that result in poisoned water, species loss, climate change, and water scarcity that damage the present and condemn our future. I learned that the forces I speak out against rarely stand alone, they are cousins to racism, transgender violence, opposition to gays and science. Science says the world begsan with divisions in Nature. Can we ever overcome the divisions in our nature? 

Seeing and Being the Tree began four years ago as the trees asked me to joined with them to follow my passion.I believe in the inclusiveness of trees. They help and share knowledge and life giving energy and supplies. They brought me to a time when all that existed was a world of water and unknown entities that fought, negotiated and became the stuff that is our world. 

​

In the past year the calls against science as hundreds of thousands of lives were lost made me turn to science and again to the trees, to set me on a path to life. The work of Puzzlement came to life  begining with the Big Bang expansion as DNA RNA were formed.

​

Heidi Curko and I are DC Common. We came together to explore the intimacy of process. Independently we have a long history of markmaking on large scale drawings. We each have our own repertoire of marks and movement in graphite, charcoal and paint. We worked mostly in black and white and greys. We shared the conflicting impuses of mapping work based on the environment.Our work together has brought color to our palette.