Sadie Sheldon

Currently on view at Rockport Center for the Arts in Rockport, TX

October 1, 2024 - November 10, 2024

In music, the fugue is a compositional structure in which elaborate complexity is developed from simultaneously sounding melodies. Simple beginnings (an initial theme or element) are set in contrast by each additional player who sounds the melody, resulting in a layered experience where new combinations of sound emerge like the colors of a rotating kaleidoscope.

Unison Fugues is a collection of recent pieces from Sadie Sheldon’s ongoing divination project. In it she explores the uncanny ability of divinatory tools to produce meaningful insight and personal revelation through chance operations.  When consulting the system, individuals are asked to bring with them a particular question or unresolved situation on which their card might offer a unique perspective. 

The larger portraits have been composed directly as a result of these encounters and display both the person who received a spontaneous reading and the card which they were dealt.  They visually portray two melodies resonating through a fateful rendezvous. The archetypal forms and symbology of the card collide with the inner state of the individual, resulting in a singular interpretive reading which often leads to uncanny synchronicity.

The visual language of the project highlights the inherent wisdom of the natural world, as well as the healing power of our own imaginations, by setting figures and symbols within environmental settings that are both familiar and fantastic. By unifying disparate materials with traditional techniques, the works find harmony in their contrast. This echoes a function of the divination system itself; to resurface ideas, capacities, or attitudes which have gone dormant within us in order to harness them toward a new perspective.

All is vibrant matter on a journey from one form into another, continually transforming with ever widening perspectives.

2023

Intended for in-person experience. Images of the 64 cards have been distorted.

During a residency at Stove Works, I created a divination system based on a series of objects I’ve collected over the past 4 years. The genesis of this project was intuitive, a magnetic pull towards the discarded and overlooked fragments of our material world, each one bearing the weight of untold stories and uncharted experiences. Each piece was encased in silver, transforming them into mystical rings adorned with profound potential.

Eight distinct categories emerged organically, reflecting the inherent order within chaos. The rings, now organized within a custom-crafted box, became the building blocks of an original divination system that transcends the boundaries of the ordinary. The amalgamation of chance and choice is enacted by a pair of dice, inviting participants to roll within the recessed mirror well, where the dance of reflections and shadows mirrors the intricate dance of fate. With 1/64 possible outcomes, each roll unveils a unique narrative, accompanied by a meticulously sewn collage and a text-based reading. These collages, born from the fragments of the forgotten, offer visual portals into the realm of the unknown, bridging the gap between the seen and the unseen.

While I make no claims to possess divine powers, this project is a celebration of our shared quest for meaning. It stands as a testament to the idea that the specific is the universal—each found object, now a ring, holds a microcosm of stories that resonate with our collective human experience. Created to be highly portable, the project has been traveling to public spaces, at random, for an hour at a time. During the short window, passersby are invited to consult the objects and receive a free reading. Throughout the process I have encountered uncanny synchronicity and been reminded of the power of human connection.

2023

Fallen and collected Magnolia leaves have been sewn together into a collection vessel to symbolize an agreement that became a ritual. 35 years ago the tree was almost destroyed due to its overbearing presence in a small space, regularly shedding its hardy leaves that had to be hand collected. To save the tree, one person agreed to collect the leaves each day so that the other plants would thrive in its presence. What started as a duty slowly evolved into a ritual.

Just prior to a month-long residency at Stove Works, I witnessed this daily act and was drawn to its simple beauty as well as that of the leaves. I began sewing the collected leaves into large sheets, then curled forms and eventually a vessel to symbolize their collection. In my Chattanooga studio it sat atop a moving blanket I’ve used consistently for 10 years, facing a sewn burlap pillow where, for the first time, I’ve introduced intentional meditation into my life and work. Twice per day I sat silently still for 20 minutes, internally repeating my mantra gathering leaves to see the tree. Over the course of 28 days the box has slowly deteriorated while I have undoubtedly gained.

Video: 3:39.

Camera: Christopher Givens and Sadie Sheldon

Music: Phil France

(b&w video, 9:11 mins. 2022. sounds made with objects from Elsewhere Museum / Greensboro, NC.)

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes — Marcel Proust

The silences rang out a mystery. Between the walls was an overwhelming entropy where persistent vibrations had me searching on the edge of panic for a month. I put on blinders in order to see. I turned off the lights. I removed all the color. I began searching through the spaces quieted by night, stripping away the inessential in order to reveal the nature of the world right in front of me. The light of day was too harsh to parse out such meanings so I kept working hours with the spiders, invariably found tucked into corners, faithfully making their webs. The resulting series of moments unfold like the slides of a carousel projector. Matter of factly, they display encounters with delicate organisms both living and beyond living. Inanimate objects set into motion by some part of me attempting to tell its own story.

What began as an engagement with outside forces led to an encounter with interiors. Not the interiors of the museum but my own perception of them and what their energetic field brought to light within me. I wandered the halls of an otherworldly landscape, like that of a dream or nightmare, where one meets things that don’t just exist out there. Time collapsed. Things called out in the dark. Their story was also my story. The framed objects manifest an inner feeling which I can’t quite name. Realizations of the self discovered with a flashlight taped to a ballcap.

This work was created during a 4-week fellowship at the Elsewhere museum in the Summer of 2022, using only materials, objects and sounds from the museum collection. The multiple floors, crowded rooms and hallways of Elsewhere once existed as a boarding house and furniture store then evolved into a peculiar type of thrift shop where the owner Sylvia Gray would vary prices on a whim depending on her assessment of the prospective buyer’s connection to the desired item. It is a labyrinthine building like something from a fairy tale. An ever-changing museum with an abundance of toys, fabric, ribbon, mirrors, collectibles, knickknacks, books and art. An odd collection of vibrant materials that brim with history and character.

video 9:11 minutes.

2020-2022

These are the visitors. 31 sets of twins imagined during the early days of the pandemic, born from exercises in active imagination and dreams. These beings filled an otherwise empty room and the absence of social interaction produced an image of a room full of women. As time moved forward and the isolation lifted, my dependency on these characters dwindled and they sat unfinished for almost 2 years. When Roe was overturned I found myself returning to these solemn women, realizing that a key reason for their initial appearance was a strong desire to surround myself with female energy in a world that largely prioritizes the needs and desires of men. In this context, a public room full of women is a subversive and revolutionary space that holds an abundance of potential for new ideas, patterns, and intensities. I see such a gathering of feminine power as way to positively transform the imaginative capacity and emotional awareness of our societies and cultures.

2020-2022

An artifact of isolation, self-imposed structure, purpose, distraction, sliding toward the unconscious, domesticity, dreaming, taking inventory of household waste, escape, obsession, adapting to limited space, solitude and doing something that must be done, without explanation.

Here are 100 views, made from the moment the city locked down through the twists and turns of a pandemic. Painted and sewn on recycled coffee bags, the images undulate between mundane moments, active imaginations and recollected dreams. All are collaged and sewn together with layers of plastic trash accumulated throughout the process. Much like the still frames of a film reel, the images are set into a sequence that tells their story in a chronological progression, weaving between the unfolding realities of sleep and awakeness.

The two year project has revolved around many questions in its 250 feet. What if each of our lives' stories were written with the reverence of treasured texts? What if the mundane and everyday held vibrant seeds of the fantastic and yet to be dreamed? How do we alter our relationship with the common waste that threatens the health of the world? What role do dreams play in guiding our individual and collective growth? This scroll is both my record of an extraordinary period, as well as a window into my own inner world where I engaged with these open questions, following my intuition with the rare luxury of time.

2021

Peering into the dark corners at dusk, the spider emerges to thread together the silk rings of her world. She’s an ancient creature depicted throughout human history as a creator, mediator, healer and a source of great fear. She is fastidious and patient, working all night to create something that must be remade again and again. There she is getting to work, so what is there to fear? She’s simply doing what must be done. It is repetitive, inglorious and sequestered in the dark of night: a display of excellence for an audience of none, but for her simply a means to live.

This is Arachne’s home after the goddess Athena punished her for taking great pride in her skills as a weaver, dooming her to the repetition and darkness we all fear. The nocturnal and elusive nature of the spider hints at their wisdom; all seeing, all sensing, ready to rappel down a long chute of silk to seize an opportunity. While we sleep, they get busy working, kin to the dreamweaver of our own unconscious. Their eight legs dance across the imaginations of many cultures, from the Greek deities to the creation myths of the Hopi where grandmother spider brings man across worlds on a journey to a unified knowing of his place in the big picture. As a psychic archetype, she lives in the dark corners of our minds’ inner chambers, ready to appear when her particular lessons are most needed.

These works meditate on my own visits with a grandmother spider as I feel the resonance between her rituals, processes, means of survival and my own. The spider functions efficiently, mindful of her web’s tenuous nature, and what’s important is making it anew every night with care. The ritual of its creation grounds her in unpredictable circumstances. Whatever fate sends into the web becomes the raw material for her continued work. The fruits of her labor, the web and all of the promise it brings, is impermanent and must adapt to changing conditions. She moves on, uses all she can, and all is unified, woven back into the web and the web in return becomes a picture of the world.

2019

This is a story of isolation. Absurd inventions, unnecessary products, the merging of the natural and synthetic worlds; all created while in 3 months of solitude at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology along the Oregon coast. Situated high on a hill, surrounded by a vast forest that vibrated with elk, birds, plants and fog I quickly transitioned from tourist to resident to wood-dwelling creature. I learned the patterns of this place- spending more time outside than in- and once the day was done and I retreated to my cabin, the belongings surrounding me felt foreign and sterile. I began making maps and tools. I brought them on various excursions, attempting to make sense of these contrasting habitats, this life split in two. At times I felt like an invader, watched from the waters and forests and, at others I felt I was finding my way closer to some mystical revelation just beyond the fog.

2019

A series about overstimulation, excess and the anxiety that accompanies the threat of making the wrong choice. We live in a world so full of options and vibrations that, on one hand, we have the tools available to suit all of our individual needs, but on the other hand, the vastness can swallow us up into a void of uncertainty. Too many choices often leads to picking nothing at all, carrying the weight of indecision, the time lost and the watchful eyes of the birds attempting to make sense of the frenzy.

2019

Moving is a sacred act, whether it’s on your terms or someone else’s or happens in a fury. It forces us to take inventory of the things we choose to live with and decide which among them will stay or go. It’s a process that can be romantic and sentimental and also uncomfortable. Companies make blankets for us to ease this tension- giant blue quilts traveling between households, down long roads, across country to soon unveil their precious contents in an empty space. But what about the things we cannot move or replace or have the instant gratification of finding again with 2 day shipping? What about the natural world that continues to be cut down, encroached upon and buzzed into small patches and never given space and time to thrive? As I spent 3 months in a biosphere reserve in Otis, Oregon I thought about these questions amidst a pile of moving blankets and protected wildlife. Imagining my long drive back to New Orleans, the city I call home, the most deforested city in the United States, I wondered how I might move the energy of a sacred forest to an urban landscape. And slowly by slowly I created a mold of a magical tree. Situated in a vast meadow that, at times, was a meeting place for a roaming elk herd I wrapped it’s limbs and sewed by hand it’s every curve and snuggle and branch. These blue quilts conformed to it’s shape, while absorbing the rain, the fog and the musky smells of roaming beasts so old they grow 2 teeth made of ivory. It marinated there until my time was complete and I cut the skin from the tree, holding the memory and symbolism of that sacred space. Upon my return I sutured the seams and stuffed it’s hollow form, precariously propped on wooden stilts within a concrete room. It stood as a ghost of it’s former glory, assembled for an audience of none, with just a photograph to prove the elusive creature had been here, bearing witness to a parallel world.

2020-2021

In 2018 I created a butcher shop installation from abandoned couches and during the time of COVID I spent some time repairing them. It began as a response to my compulsion to save things from certain landfill death, but turned into an exciting exploration of furniture, design and the very real possibility of putting art everywhere and anywhere. I particularly love couches and chairs for their anthropomorphic energy in an empty room and also their utility in filling that room with people and conversation. Most have been upholstered entirely from found and recycled fabrics, with many of the patters emerging from motifs found in my dreams.

2018

I had never watched The Wire and always wanted to. Here are 23 scenes interpreted in metal and wire, made standing on my two feet with Bluetooth headphones and a shitty laptop in Grand Rapids, MI. Views from above, shapes of conversation, character studies and the deep interconnectedness between people, institutions and corruption are found within these frames. To the unknowing eye and mind, they present as formal abstractions, one seamlessly moving into the other in an episodic progression, until the season ends and we find something else to do, forgetting the meaning embedded inside the frames.

2018. A hunting term used to denote the process of removing internal organs from a carcass, field dressing is a means to preserve the desirable.   It is a pragmatic ritual that sheds the burden of the unpredictable, sometimes volatile, components of the whole. I liken this practice to our consumer culture, as we continually obtain, discard and replace the material things that fill our lives.  This project reimagines the purpose of the abandoned furniture found in South Bend as I assume the role of hunter and butcher in order to commodify the unwanted.

2018. A synthetic landscape constructed from the things we leave behind, Scenic Viewpoint imagines our legacy as a consumerist society. Found materials are layered as geological strata to form structures resembling both natural land forms and architectural ruins. Throughout the lifespan of the installation, the work will be dismantled, repackaged and sold as a commodity.

2018

Many of us collect keepsakes from the things we’ve experienced. Mementos from our travels, objects from loved ones, pieces of paper that prove we experienced something on a particular date at that designated time. Letters. As acquiring becomes more accessible and immediate, perhaps the sentimentality drains and a higher volume of mementos pass in and out of our hands. This is the story of the undulating curbs that welcome our cast-offs in a kind of purgatory until they meet their final destination on the hill, surrounded by birds. This is a collection of my mementos, cataloging a time and place and a disposability that’s become so ubiquitous in our consumer culture.

2017

In collaboration with Ursa Eyer, Atlas of a Deconstructed Albatross is an exploration of the interior of a living body overcome by synthetic waste. The installation tells a visual narrative as the material enters, flows within and exits it’s host.

2017

As our synthetic waste continues to overcome the landscape, these works become the hides that are blanketing our environment. Made entirely from found materials, often found in forgotten places, the hides animate the abundance of our waste and it’s growing affect on our surroundings.

2015

Reimagines marine colonies in the wake of climate change.

2014

In collaboration with Sarah Ball, this project explores the Industrial Canal and its accompanying 9 bridges in New Orleans, LA. Constructed as a shortcut for freight liners from the Mississippi River to Lake Ponchartrain, the Canal was initiated as an efficient solution for the city. In reality, the Canal divided the 9th Ward neighborhood, introduced saltwater into wetland waterways and increased the city’s vulnerability to flooding and storm surges. This project explores the volatility of the Canal as well as the bridges that attempt to reconnect the divided neighborhoods.

Portions of this project were commissioned by Greg and Mike for the dining room of Pizza Delicious where it is on permanent display at 617 Piety St, New Orleans, LA.

2010-present

Here are some examples of my raw, intuitive practice of formulating ideas, experimenting and working it out. They’re ugly, violent, absurd, chaotic, vulnerable and exploratory and can help gather seeds for future work. And sometimes they’re simply a mechanism to clear the cobwebs to make space for ideas soon to be realized.

2013

A collection of work about the goings on when we’re not looking and the quest to find those things in the middle of the night when all is seemingly still. Cigarettes lined on the sidewalk indicate a gathering, the night blooming plants call to silence and solitude, a moth blends into the chipping paint on that house and the paper mill looms with shadows skating behind it’s windows. There is a trail of hints and traces that can and will lead to stories and speculation, but what if we are the unknowing architects of the very problems we seek to solve. Perhaps the dairy maid is not menacingly cursing you each time you fail to handle the sweetened condensed milk with grace. Each time you meet her, your paranoia becomes a self fulfilling prophecy that leaves you heavy and sticky and without the imagination to conjure the right tool.

2010

Working from memory, these are maps of places I’ve seen, felt and imagined. Through a meditative process of collecting, burning, flattening, folding and hand sewing food cans, I meditate on place— as a concept, identity, incubator, textural landscape— and create maps of this topography in order to capture the movement that enters and exits these special places.

2008

This collection highlights portals and the shimmers of color, form and otherworldliness that envelop us the moment we become passengers on the cesna of our daydreams, to arrive at a destination unknown. Sometimes they appear just as they are and the other side is within sight, but other times we enter it’s mysterious house and experience a journey of sight, sound, feeling and new ways to see the world we thought we understood.

2007

An experiment in creating surreal landscapes from those mundane and familiar to my day-to-day. With a holga camera, mounted to a Polaroid film attachment, I manipulated landscapes within the camera, printed directly onto instant film. It felt like painting with real life or collaging with my mind and this raw experimentation with film perfectly mirrored my personal life as I experimented with any and all drugs in a pursuit of altered states.

2005

I watched a lot of creative reality shows as a kid. Stuff like America’s Next Top Model, Trading Spaces, Project Runway and What Not To Wear, to name a few. I watched so much TV in those days that it’s the reason I’ve never owned one in my adult life and rarely watch episodic work on my computer. It’s a world I don’t want to get wrapped in now, but as a kid from Ohio it took me to so many places of possibility. I loved these reality shows not for the drama, or the hollywood standard of fashion and decoration, not for the shame, or toxic ideas of commercial beauty, but for the shape shifting. Places, people and material were constantly transforming- into new and wondrous creatures, complicated wearables and spaces that suited the lifestyle and needs of the people it contained. Here’s a series of portraits that began as a seed of an idea, exploring the power of transformation, camouflage and puppetry amongst living beings.