| RE:VISIONS REVISE REMIX RETHINK | Selected Exhibitions |
Like most Americans, I have consumed a vast amount of advertising, media, and pop culture imagery; as an artist and a collector, I have amassed a formidable collection and appropriate them for use in my collages.
The flotsam and jetsam from over the past 80 decades, the vintage advertising, articles, booklets, comics and illustrations that permeated the American twentieth-century mass media play in an endless loop through my mind, cluttering it like so many teetering stacks of vintage magazines that clutter my art studio. A visual archeologist of sorts, I dig deep into American mythology collaging iconic symbols, text, and images from the past 70 years.
I am a collage artist whose work has focused on examining social fictions whether politically, gender-based, or race by deconstructing the vast cultural clutter of mid-century America.
This was an important time in our country’s social, historical and political history whose imprint informs us today. Trump and his minions want to restore the American Dream and the middle class back to that mid-century mythical place- a conflict-free whiter than white America. But of course the red white and blue America that once sparkled in Kodacolor did not sparkle for all.
We are an America whose identity has been forged by myths that no longer hold true but like a toxic overspill remain with us today.
As today's middle class is fading away like a Kodacolor print and the American Dream itself has gone into foreclosure, I found myself drawn to old periodicals, advertising and propaganda from mid-century America to see how the American Dream and the American Way was sold to us.
Collage becomes the perfect vehicle to deconstruct these fragmented messages.
The collages, all hand-cut paper, are composed of hundreds of images appropriated from vintage advertising, periodicals, newspapers, vintage school books, old illustrations, comic books, pulp fiction and all sorts of ephemera, bringing to the surface in a visual way the stories that Americans have been telling themselves over the past 70 years.
The importance of the images is they offer a mirror to the once upon a time American dream as presented in a media calculated to sell the American dream to the world and to ourselves. It is what these images tell us about the culture that produced them and the people that consume them.
These media images are the sharpest renderings not of reality but of domestic and national ideals reinforcing cultural, political, gender and racial stereotypes.
By dissociating the picture from their original intent I can give unexpected meaning not only to the images we grew up with but to the events that were then shaping the world and continue to shape our present.
We are now living in the future we looked forward to at the end of WWII and that world finds us anxious and cynical. In this age of diminishing expectations, the contrasts between those lowered expectations and the unduly heightened ones that predeeded it form some of the subtext of the work
Defrosting the cold war world of my childhood these collages re-envision the Atomic Age of nuclear families and nuclear bombs, mad men and happy housewives that littered a pop culture landscape run rampant with mass media myths.
The cold war was a bone chilling time. While American soaring can do confidence offered us a sugar-frosted promise of a future filled with frost-free fun and abundance, that giddy optimism coexisted with the very real fear of nuclear anniliatin. I would catch a cold war chill that I could never quite shake.
BIO
N.Y. narrative collage artist Sally Edelstein defrosts the Cold War, piecing together visual fragments of Mid-Century American myths. Her work has focused on examining social fictions whether politically, gender-based, or race by deconstructing the vast cultural clutter of mid-century America through the lens of feminism and social justice.
Curating the cultural clutter of the Cold War, her creative, cultural commentaries have taken many forms. Whether as a fine artist, an illustrator, or a pop culture historian consulting for ABC News, her ironic sensibility and keen insights into popular culture put a unique stamp on her work.
Along with other 20th century artists, her work is included in “Conversations in American Literature, Language Rhetoric, Culture” an AP High School Literature Text Book published by Bedford/ St Martins.
Nationally exhibited, she is a multiple awards recipient from the Society of Three Dimensional Illustrators, The Art Directors Club of N.Y. and The Society of Illustrators. This New Yorker has served as a guest lecturer on post-war American culture at Fordham University, The New School for Social Research and the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis.
Her blog “Envisioning the American Dream” is a collection of social and historical commentaries that serve up mid century culture with a visual twist of today as assumptions are shaken and stirred.
An upcoming book “Defrosting the Cold War: Fallout From My Nuclear Family” is her memoir of how she learned to navigate the tangled doublespeak duck and cover cold war culture of her mid century childhood. Layering memory, nostalgia, humor, and history the stsory is a cultural snapshot of a time and place but like a posed Kodacolor print it was not as it appeared.
Trained at The College of Visual and Performing Arts, Syracuse University and The School of Visual Arts, NYC, she is a member of Women's Caucus for the Arts, and College Artists Association.
https://www.lilith.org/blog/2020/09/collage-artist-sally-edelstein-my-politics-is-my-art/
As the author/illustrator of "This Year's Girl ", published by Doubleday, she takes a light-hearted look back at the fashion, music, politics and products from the fallout 1960's - the Me-Decade of the 1970's through the consumer conscious 1980's as told through the eyes of a quintessential baby boomer girl. Cleverly using paper dolls and their cut out accessories as a metaphor for the way we adopt the newest fads, fashions and implicit mentalities with the ease of folding over a paper tab, the book is lavishly illustrated with hundreds of familiar artifacts and is a treasure trove of visual tropes.
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Upcoming Art Exhibits
Exploring Aspects of War In and Through the Visual Arts
Northern University Illinois University Art Museum
1425 W. Lincoln Highway, DeKalb, IL
Exhibition Dates: August 27- November 30, 2019
Art and Brain Disorders Symposium "The Integration of Art, Science and Medicine"
Brown University's Warren Alpert Medical School, Providence, RI
Exhibition Dates: June 13- August 21, 2019
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
"FL3TCH3R Exhibit: Social and Politicall Engaged Art" Reece Museum, Eastern Tennessee State University, Johnson City , Tenn 2018
"RISE: Empower, Change, and Action" Whitney Modern Gallery, Los Gatos, CA June 2018
Ceres 13th National Juried Exhibition" Ceres Gallery, N.Y.N.Y. March 2018 Sara Softness, Juror Assistant Curator The Brooklyn Museum
Feminine/Feminist Exhibit Gallery66NY Exhibition: 2018
"Nasty"Arc Gallery, San Francisco, CA 94103, 2017
Embedded Messages: Debating the Dream, Truth Justice and the American Way
The Art Center, Highland Park, Ill. 60035, March3- April 2, 2017 http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_58a7081de4b0b0e1e0e20997
NEW CENTURY ARTISTS GALLERY, NY, NY Feb. 2011 "Hidden Cities" 2011 National Juried Exhibition, Juror: Lisa Phillips, New Museum of Contemorary Art, NYC
AIR GALLERY, DUMBO, N.Y. December 2, 2010 -January 2, 2011 "At Her Age" Curated by Martha Wilson
ARLINGTON ART MUSEUM, Arlington, Texas February 2008 Juror: Dr. Maura Reilly Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at The Brooklyn Museum
AIR GALLERY, Chelsea, New York, N.Y March 8- April 7, 2007 "Seventh Annual Biennial Exhibition" Juror: Connie Butler MOMA
COLUMBIA/BARNARD UNIVERSITY, KRAFT CENTER FOR JEWISH LIFE, New York, N.Y. Feb-March 20, 2007 Womens Caucus for Art Presents "Words Within"
BOSTON UNIVERSITY RUBIN FRANKEL GALLERY April 2007 "Words Within" Boston, Mass.
VISUAL ARTS CENTER OF NEW JERSEY, Summit, N.J. Feb 9-April 2007 "The Twenty First Annual International Juried Show" Juror: Laura Hoptman, Senior Curator, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, N.Y. Honorable Mention
SETON HALL UNIVERSITY, WALSH GALLERY, South Orange, N.J. April 16, - May 2007 "Detritus"
CERES GALLERY, Chelsea, New York, N.Y. May 23- June 2006 "Seventh Annual Juried Exhibiti " Juror: Cora Rosevear MOMA
AIR GALLERY, Chelsea, New York, N.Y. March 9- April 2006 "Generation 2006" The exhibition included a fundraiser in collaboration with Womens eNews and a silent auction of the work.
VISUAL ARTS CENTER OF NEW JERSEY, Summit, N.J. 2006
ART DIRECTORS CLUB, New York, N.Y. December 2000 "Twelfth Annual Three Dimensional Illustrators Awards Show" 3 Bronze Awards
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN, NEW WORKS GALLERY, Chicago, Ill. March 1999
ART DIRECTORS CLUB, New York, N.Y December 1998 "Tenth Annual Three Dimensional Illustrator's Awards Show" 2 Bronze, 2 Silver Awards
UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY, STALLER CENTER FOR THE ARTS, STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY, Stony Brook, N.Y. March 5- April 1997 "Text and Identity: Twelve Women/ Twelve Artists"
MILLS POND HOUSE, Smithtown Council of the Arts, St. James, N.Y. March 1997 "Women, Words and Images"
ART DIRECTORS CLUB, New York, N.Y December 1996 "Eighth Annual Three Dimensional Illustrator's Awards Show" 1 Gold Award, 3 Bronze Awards
MILLS POND HOUSE, Smithtown Council of the Arts, St. James, N.Y May 4 -June 1996 "Art and the Battlefield"
THE VISUAL CLUB, New York, N.Y. January 12- February 21, 1996 "Illustrator's Awards Show" Bronze Award Winner
ART DIRECTORS CLUB, New York, N.Y December 1995 "Three Dimensional Art Directors and Illustrator's Awards Show" 3 Bronze Awards
HECKSCHER MUSEUM, Huntington, N.Y. May 12- June 11 1995 "Fortieth Annual Long Island Arts Exhibit" NYNEX Award Winner