Team

New SAND Art Editor Ruhi P. Amin joined the team with an exciting new vision and identity for the artistic direction of the journal. As a British-Indian artist, chef, and writer (in that order), Ruhi was born in London, spent four years in Paris studying Fine Arts, and has performed and had her work exhibited in multiple shows in Paris, London, Brussels, and Berlin. She is also the co-creator of Berlin-based artists’ and writers’ collective Slanted House.

Ruhi is inspired by a range of artists from 18th century masters to contemporary creators such as Tracy Emin, Rashid Johnson, Sophie Calle, Albert Oehlen, Yoko Ono, Mariechen Danz, and Joseph Beuys, particularly his blackboard drawings. “If I had to name one artist who will always hold a place in my heart, it’s Francisco Goya,” Ruhi says. ”His black and white drawings (especially the one of Don Quixote) are forever etched in my memory, some of the most beautiful artwork I’ve ever discovered.”

And she’s looking for a similar range in the work that artists submit to SAND. Ruhi says, “Sometimes I find that artwork is overly complicated and over-thought. There is a wonderful simplicity in executing a good idea through honesty.” She encourages SAND submitters to show her “something real and different – something I don’t know.” Conceptually, she’s open, whether the work is political, experimental, text and painting, or sketches, which she “LOVES” (in all caps). Ruhi “strongly” encourages “sculptors and performance artists to send in stills and images of their work” as well. “We need to see more of a variety of mediums,” she says, “and particularly performance, which in our current social and political climate is proving to be one of the most powerful”.

Ruhi is especially interested in artists whose stories are expressed through their art. “When looking for intriguing artwork,” she says, “I’m drawn to the background of the artist, more so than the aesthetic and materiality of the piece itself. If an artist is able to beautifully combine a conceptual structure with history and personality and choose their medium well, then I believe the piece will be a success.” It is also important to her that artists of color and artists from the LGBTQ+ communities are elevated since these stories are especially important to share and show.

SAND submissions of visual art, fiction, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and translations are open until January 5th, 2020. All formats and mediums of visual art are accepted, including illustration, painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, and images of installments and performance art. Read our submissions guidelines and send in your very best work here.

Text by Crista Siglin and Natalie Mariko with an Introduction by Ashley Moore

Editorial Note: Crista Siglin is still with SAND as one of our co-poetry editors, and former poetry editor Natalie Mariko left SAND in 2019. We are very excited to have Emma Lawson on as our second poetry editor along with Crista. This article provides insight into SAND’s poetry style, and any future submissions should be sent to Crista and Emma.

AN INTRODUCTION TO AN INTRODUCTION

What do traditional artist’s introductions tell us? Biographical information, starting with current location. A list of publications, and if we’re lucky, an artist’s statement. The partners, dogs, parakeets, and children the artists might be living with in previously-mentioned current location.

When we asked our new poetry editors Natalie Mariko and Crista Siglin to introduce themselves, they agreed that this approach might “flatten” them rather than giving readers a “glimpse into their editing sensibilities,” according to Crista. So the two began with the traditional introductions and set out to “extend poetic abstraction/attention to the very boring, self-referential, wanky realm of artist introductions” by “deconstructing each other’s intros into poems.”

The idea was formed in a Berlin cafe, and the process was honed in a series of emails, during which our editors discussed deconstruction as introduction as well as deadlines and sick cats. As for the process, each editor would send over their traditional introductory “blurbs” and then each would “dissect” the other’s blurb into a poem. The discussion of process continued from there, along with more discussion of cats, and produced three poems that “introduce” each editor.

Natalie says the emails are actually the “better half of the two conceptual parts” since they are “the ghost in the machine made visible,” namely: “The process is all in there, not in me explaining why I moved a word to the next line” of the final poems, which are included at the end. Of the “essential” nature of the inclusion of the emails in this article, our poetry editors say:

“The drudgery of the sick cats, the banter–this is sort of @ the thematic heart of what I love to read. There is a cat vomiting on my carpet. The cat can’t help it. It just vomits, w/out want. An act of pure function. Poetry blames the cat. Or draws a connection btwn the cat retch & why the weather has been unseasonably warm. Or &c. The act of poetry is the attribution of intent to function, especially as it originates in the reader (in my example, Me watching the cat vomit). It blurs the definition btwn cat & weather. A type of willful schizophrenia.” — Natalie

“Poetry blames the cat. This for me has a morphic resonance with ‘Love’s the burning boy.’ An idea inflicting something on a character or object, and through that relationship, the nature of the idea can change alongside the character. ‘Casabianca’ by Elizabeth Bishop (in which the burning boy may be found) is one of my favorite examples of a poem subtly shifting expectation for how one word will defined throughout its course. Love’s meaning constricts and dilates, depending on the perspective and metaphorical highlighting. I always keep this in a corner of my mind. When I am writing or editing, I am looking for some way to expand or sharpen the meaning of a word. Whether it is through spacial means (this is how I approached editing Natalie’s introduction; through erasures and implementing space), repetition, or perspectival shifts.” — Crista

THE EMAILS

Natalie to Crista:

It’s fascinating to read about a colleague in this way–as if the person I will be seeing @ monthly meetings could be artistically reduced to a sort of list of acco.s & fixed opinions. I don’t know about you, but writing artist statements always made me feel rather pompous. Like sending a court clerk before me to announce my arrival. But perhaps even then there’s an artistry to something so seemingly banal as introduction, no? My thought is we limit this to no more than 3 volleys/editor, so as to avoid repetition.

Crista to Natalie:

Yes, I agree about both the banality and pomp of writing about oneself in this way. I had to cut a lot of words I was hiding under from mine…as well as graft different statements from different times together…yet I still feel hidden (but I couldn’t bear to start completely from scratch). It feels like writing about myself in this way misses most of the things for which I am actually proud of myself. But I can scarcely include “Crista can complete Jacob’s Ladder in ten seconds with her eyes closed.” It also misses one’s weaknesses. Like how many times I have to Google search the differences between certain words. Regardless, I am enjoying this exercise. Yours was quite fun to work with.

I hope your cat is okay.

Natalie to Crista:

Well, in terms of meeting that deadline, I’d classify this as ‘better late than never’. Now that we’ve given one another a raw rearrangement of the texts, perhaps it’d be fun to edit what the other’s made of them? And then perhaps thereafter combining them? Or? If you have something in mind, let me know. This is the most enjoyable writing task I’ve had in a solid few weeks.

The cats – Keala & Humus, the poor souls – are my roommate’s & the last I smelled they are quite ill. I have to help her give them two pills each every few hours which is painful for all of us.

Crista to Natalie:

I firmly believe in the better late than never philosophy.

CRISTA SIGLIN
By Natalie Mariko and Crista Siglin

Natalie Mariko
By Crista Siglin and Natalie Mariko