The Earth Laughs in Flowers - Yolanda Sanchez

YOLANDA SÁNCHEZ The Earth Laughs in Flowers

GALLERIES

YOLANDA SÁNCHEZ The Earth Laughs in Flowers

NOV 2021

MAR 2022

MIAMI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT Concourse D, near Gate D29, post-security

GALLERIES

Rambles & Reveries #1 of 6 2018 oil on Arches paper 22 x 30 inches

CONTENTS Introduction....................................................................................................................... 7 Gendry Sherer Director, Fine Arts & Cultural Affairs Miami International Airport Yolanda Sánchez: Fruition.............................................................................................. 9 Anne Swartz, Ph.D. Professor, Art History Savannah College of Art and Design Artist Statement.............................................................................................................. 15 Yolanda Sánchez, Ph.D., MFA Exhibition Images........................................................................................................... 19 The Eye Has to Travel Gallery Miami International Airport Overview of Related Works (2014-2021)....................................................................... 29 Biography........................................................................................................................ 49

INTRODUCTION It is my great pleasure to present The Earth Laughs in Flowers, a site-specific fiber and textile installation

by Miami-based Cuban American artist Yolanda Sánchez. Some may know her as an abstract painter or as a practicing clinical psychologist or university professor. Others may know Yolanda as a curator and arts administrator who single-handedly founded MIA Galleries, Miami International Airport’s awardwinning arts & exhibitions program. Amidst the differences in these roles, a common thread exists: the artist lives and serves to heal, inspire, and bring joy and delight to others. Having worked under the artist when she was the arts program director at the Airport, I identify her as one who pursues and seeks to offer beauty and pleasure as gifts to others in all her work.

In this exhibition, inspired by Korean Bogaji textile work, Yolanda’s sensuous fiber constructions in luscious, vibrant colors take viewers through an imaginary garden. In a vast sense, nature and the spiritual are the artist’s sources of inspiration in her textile work and paintings (her primary medium).

In Laughter in the Garden, a nine-panel installation consisting of multicolored translucent fabrics, the

artist proffers a walk through a rich, luminous field of abstract flowers fueled by her love for the beauty she finds in South Florida’s tropical landscape.

This installation re-creates and materializes her immediate natural environment to visualize its light, color, and atmosphere. Mounted at varying angles of overlapping panels, the installation consists of striking geometric patterns giving the work movement, rhythm, and harmony: intangible qualities from which the artist derives pleasure. As the artist states in her essay that follows, this sensory pleasure, mediated through the energizing and visual experience, is what she desires to bring forth in the viewer.

We hope the works in this exhibition will give you joy, redirect your thoughts into a contemplative state, and shape your experience, even for a moment, as you make your way to your destiny.

Gendry Sherer, Director Airport Fine Arts & Cultural Affairs

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Along the Road of Dreams 2016 oil on canvas 72 x 72 inches (triptych) 72 x 24 inches (each panel)

YOLANDA SÁNCHEZ: FRUITION Yolanda Sánchez’s art involves organized treatments of color—strong, bold, rich, and satisfying. The sensation of the rapid passage of time and the quick rendering of the work emerges from the loose boundaries around her primary forms, suggesting they just arrived into view or burst onto the scene. The viewer gets a sense of motion because the light vibrates, illuminating the surface on the canvas. The white surrounding the brilliant colored strokes or the silhouette created around the profile of the dazzling and vivid colors used in the textile pieces changes the experience. The artist provides just enough transparency to give her surfaces glowing appearances, adding to the glitz of the selected colors. Looking at some art historical prototypes, many unconnected to the artist’s intention will allow a glimpse into some of the ways Sánchez orders nature, connects it to invention and insight, and reveals or suggests places and spaces.

In meditating on the shapes, forms, lines, strokes, compositions, and materials in Sánchez’s artworks in this current exhibition, “The Earth Laughs in Flowers,” I found I wavered between the present and the elsewhere.

I realized I saw the work, yet I also glimpsed memories of colors and brushstrokes seen in other art. To develop my thinking about this body of work, I explored those oft-immediate parallels or glimmers at the edges of my consciousness, some ideas prompted by conversations with the artist.1 The titles directed my thinking about the paintings to moods, to evocations of experiences. At the same time, the dominant vertical shape or horizontal axis in the fabric hangings suggested personages or outstretched arms.

The arabesque lines, the segmentation of the brushstrokes sometimes layered and other times left thin, the canyons of energy, the activation of the painted space, the traces showing the sweeps of the artist’s hand, the brilliant colors, and the sweeping gesture recalled the Romantic embrace of the land. The robust burst of giddy, vivid energy swirling at the center of the space in Sánchez’s paintings conjure memories before

the famed Starry Night of 1889 by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) in the fireworks show the artist gives the viewer. The landscape undulates, the sky swirls. The failed Dutch theology student-turned-artist Vincent van Gogh left turned his attentions to Japonisme, the love of all things Japanese prevalent in the first part of the 19th century, especially in France, that he had first encountered in Antwerp. When he relocated to Paris, he immersed himself in the study of Japanese prints.2 He became enamored with how the prints revealed images of the natural world, humanity out in the world, different atmospheric effects, activity centered in the composition, or open space areas.

Living with his brother Theo (1857-1891), an art dealer and his main patron, they actively collected them, and Van Gogh felt guided to paint nature. This experience, this encounter, drew him to seek more land to paint. He also wanted softer light and a wider range of natural colors, which he deemed a more Japanese way of seeing, influenced by the prints he admired. He decided to move to Provence, in the south of France. Specifically, he relocated to Arles early in 1888 during snow and wind. Rapidly, the weather warmed in that temperate region, and the artist became captivated by the brilliant blossoming trees and blooms. Many Arles paintings focus on flowering trees in the landscape or the branch with blossoms as a still life.3 With sudden earnestness, he saturated the colors, making them more intense. The world became robust, alive, and bright in his paintings there. Nature became a place of refuge for Van Gogh.

That idea of care, of finding a place for safeguarding, is how Sánchez presents thought and emotional landscapes to her viewers. Her paintings and textiles do not depict, portray, or represent; instead, they infer, manifest, and provoke. This era no longer offers safety for presumptions that land, sky, air, and sea will exist ever in abundance. Limits do exist. Nature is no longer a boundless place of yield. However, Sánchez proffers strength in the grand embrace of beauty found in the

Telephone conversations with Yolanda Sánchez, May 12, 2021 and August 2, 2021. The interpretation of the artist’s remarks represents my understanding except where I directly quote her.

The Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam has an excellent multimedia narrative about Van Gogh’s interest in Japonisme. (See “Meet Vincent: Inspiration from Japan,” Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, accessed September 3, 2021 [https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/stories/inspiration-from-japan]).

3 The Arles paintings number 185, made between February 1888 and April 1889.

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world, in nature all around. When Van Gogh made his paintings, the Industrial Revolution changed European countries into interconnected places but riddled the land with noise, activity, and risk. By going away from the city, Van Gogh thought he found a more authentic connection to his vision, to nature. Within Sánchez’s sensate landscapes, there’s a removal from the stresses of daily life.

Sánchez made no such move to the remote countryside, yet the works show a bright beauty, a world filled with possibilities. A longtime resident of Miami, and Miami Beach, in particular, the artist surrounds herself with the city. Yet, Miami remains one of the unique urban centers that, despite its densely populated areas, remains attached to its glowing light, tropical plants, thriving gardens, and lush beaches. Progress for her does not diminish the freedom to enjoy the space and place. Speaking broadly about her work, she noted: “The light and the color create the sense of place.” 4 The joy and invigoration of her art awakened elated ideas about nature and the land, almost fantastic ideals.

The artist’s sensitivity to capture the encounter with the beautiful, that for anyone familiar with Miami’s light and coast, could suggest its environs, especially in the recurrence of the pink. While all her strokes and textiles do not involve pink, it is a perennial experience in art on view in this show. Sánchez ascribes pink and her interest in it to multi-dimensional concerns. These span gender identifications and their complications. They continue to beauty and sensuality or the sentimentality of valentines and the attraction of flowers, but much more. Pink in Sanchez’s paintings and textiles implies multi-dimensional possibilities. It appeals to many artists because it references the body, the blood flowing under the skin yet apparent in the flesh of all shades, and suggests robust life. Many flora and fauna share pink colors and tones. However, pink involves opposite ends of the visible color spectrum using red and purple light.5 The profusion of pink for anyone familiar with Miami prompts contemplation of Surrounded Islands installed in 1983 by artists Christo (1935-2020) and 4

Jeanne-Claude (1935-2009).6 The fabric extended out and around the eleven islands looked like giant water lilies, writ large from famed Giverny gardens near Paris of French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840-1926) and his series of paintings of the same name. Monet planned his gardens meticulously, relying on many international gardening manuals in his library, to ensure shared blooms, thus intensifying colors in the planar space of his canvases.7 Christo and Jeanne-Claude liked the proliferation of pink throughout Miami life, culture, and land.

Any casual observer will see pink abounds in this part of Florida, unlike other areas. The natural pinks vary widely. These pinks oscillate between the bright DayGlo pink flamingos and the pink birds sometimes found in the former Parrot Jungle. They continue to the robust erotic pinks of the topical flowers and, perhaps most abundant, the blush full-blooded pink of its fall and winter sunsets. The 1980s would give the world “Miami Vice” bubble-gum pink, but the history extends further. Laden with pinks, Miami’s built environment range widely, including Art Deco pinks of Miami Beach architecture, the dusty, lemonade pink found at places like the Fab Fifties Eden Roc Hotel, the salmon-orange pinks of Coral Gables homes and buildings, neon-pinks of Miami Line

by Rockne Krebs (1938-2011) or the Miami Tower by I.M. Pei (1917-2019) or the long-lost silver-pink of the Dadeland Sea Horse or the blush pink of the demolished trompe l’oeil Collins Avenue peek into the Fontainebleau Hotel by Richard Haas (1936-). Now Miami offers fuchsia on its basketball team uniforms. Its ubiquity impresses its importance upon the resident, visitor, and anyone seeking visual pleasure.

Any reference to Miami contains heat. The spectacularly high temperatures bring a flush to the face of anyone spending time there. That blush includes the variety of pinks Sánchez evokes in many of her artworks.8 When it is pale, it has a tint, meaning the color consists of white to lighten it. This pale pink is delicate, feminine, romantic.

It recalls the orchid and its rapid bloom, tender and requiring patience, responsible nurturing. Alternately,

Email correspondence with Yolanda Sánchez, August 2, 2021.

Michael Moyer, “Observations: Stop This Absurd War on the Color Pink,” Scientific American (March 5, 2012), https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/stop-this-absurd-war-on-the-color-pink/.

The work existed for two weeks in 1983, after three years of planning in Biscayne Bay, between the city of Miami, North Miami, the Village of Miami Shores, and Miami Beach.

7 British curator Ann Dumas discusses the importance of garden planning to Monet’s art in her exhibition catalogue essay “Monet’s Garden at Giverny,” in Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse, edited by William H. Robinson and Ann Dumas (London and Cleveland: Royal Academy of Arts and The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2015): 46-65. The organizational system Monet used in his gardens serves as a framing component of the whole exhibition catalogue.

8 Specific discussion about the color pink requires reference to American performance artist Joanna Frueh’s many meditations on the subject, particularly “The Performance of Pink (2003).” See the various performance documents in Joanna Frueh, Clairvoyance (for those in the desert): performance pieces, 1979-2004 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).

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and perhaps more often, the hot pink arises. This one is the color of protest and pleasure. It is shaded, darkened with black, which manifests shock or rebellion. The pink genitalia and the beauty that rush blood in a state of ecstasy embody desire —literalize it, make it real.

Many contemporary artists probe abstraction to depict inner states of being. Among the American women using it to consider inner landscapes or the flow of poetry include Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) and Joan Snyder (1940-). But Sánchez, in contrast to the others, remains resolutely concerned with protection and tenderness. Her abstraction more closely aligns with that of Joan Mitchell (1925-1992). Mitchell became captivated with the landscapes of southern France, like many artists in the past.

Sánchez shares an incandescent view of the landscape or floriculture with Mitchell. But, she diverges from the earlier artist in that the creeping sense of mortality is not ever-present in her work. Instead, Sánchez’s art feels recuperative and invigorating, more akin to a fiesta or the motion of the dance.

pioneering work in photographic studies of human and animal motion and his invention of the zoopraxiscope, also spoken about as a “magic lantern,” an early device for projecting moving images and a precursor to the movie projector. The photographs show repeated moments of figures—human or animal—progressing in space. For example, he used his photographs to depict the moment when a horse had all four legs off the ground at once.

He focused on the individual “frame” of movement in separate photographs, then put them into a sequence to suggest motion.10 By contrast, the French scientist Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) looked at progressive action stages in a single image to reveal the overall movement.

Photographers later in the 20th and 21st centuries manipulate their shutters to freeze and blur motion.

Painters like Sánchez adapt their materials to achieve such effects.

There’s a mood in all art. The surface activity in Sánchez’s canvases and the kaleidoscopic effects of her segmented fabric compositions point to the artist’s encounter with the materials and the challenge of being an artist. Expressing oneself fully and making oneself open Laughter in the Garden (detail) And with dance, music continues represent complex tasks. While as a concern for Sánchez, what she describes as many people label themselves artists, few achieve necessary. English art critic Walter Pater (1839-1894) professional stature. Artistic hope for communication once remarked: “All art constantly aspires towards the through the work remains a tedious or trying process. condition of music.” 9 The constant dilemma for artists, Her art embodies her vigor and incandescence, such as Sánchez working with fixed materials, addresses which draws the viewer towards an Arcadian view ways to incorporate the feeling and consciousness of a worthwhile world. The scale of the forms in the of movement and motion. If one knows about the compositional space, the sequencing of strokes, and the photographic interest in imaging the passage of time, balance of the image to the surrounding area harmonize. then the name of English photographer Eadweard In the canvas space, the overall impact reminds of quick Muybridge (1830-1904) will quickly come to mind. glimpses, feeling enlivening rather than chaotic. The He’s the photographer most readily recognized for his color choices and the irregular repetition of forms adds a

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Walter Pater, The Renaissance Studies in Art and Poetry, edited and with an introduction by Adam Philips (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p 86.

Anne Swartz, “A Redating of Kupka’s “Amorpha, Fugue in Two Colors II,” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Vol. 80, No. 8 (October 1993): 345, https://www.jstor.org/stable/i25161424.

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Amorous Pursuit 2016 oil on canvas 45 x 64 inches (diptych) 45 x 32 inches (each panel)

sense of haphazardness to the textiles. But rather than seeming spasmodic or conveying volatility, the unifying shape gives a heft, a sense of solidity, even to the more translucent or gossamer-looking hangings.

Whether working with paint or fabric, Sánchez engages with the selected medium to realize her ideas about beauty. At the crux of her shifts between different media lies the particular phenomenon each provides the artist.

Fueled by her creative drive, her thoughts propel her towards certain materials to identify what will work best for her in a given moment or series. With Sánchez, the materials convey the mutable and the natural qualities central to her imagery, subject matter, compositions, and forms.

Sánchez’s repetitive stroke, applied in staccato and syncopated motions, suggests capturing and holding time, which persists as an artistic concern. In Japanese culture, cherry blossoms endure as a symbol of transience—the abundant flowering of the garden long captivated artists in many cultures. In 17th Dutch Baroque art, women painters became active as still life artists because the culture regarded it as a lesser genre or subject matter than history painting. One of the main images in Dutch still life paintings is the image of the beautiful flower at the peak of its bloom. Often the artist showed tulips, a by-product of the Tulipomania then prevalent, while also demonstrating the reach of the Dutch Empire, its colonizing conquerors returning to the homeland with exotic new flora found during their travels.

A long history of wanting love recurs as a theme in art. In her titles, Sánchez gives the viewer notions of searching and wondering. In the 18th century, French Rococo painters wanted to reveal the passage of time and the sense of melancholy the lover feels when unable to sate the desire. The profil perdu, or lost profile, became a standard device commonly used in painting during that era by those artists of a turned head, where the face remains partially in view while the eyes look beyond or out of frame. Scenes of leisure, often with mythological or allegorical overtones, and typically in pastoral landscapes, functioned as settings for the beloved to try to attain the inaccessible and, therefore, an unquenched object of desire. But the works in this exhibition do not embody longing as quality of yearning. Instead, they suggest eagerness or even the state of being bewitched.

The geometric imposition of the stroke and the rectilinear form of the textile components perhaps compel this response. The application of paint and the construction of the fiber work necessitates systematic, methodical adjustments on the artist’s part. Sánchez uses geometric abstraction to give the viewer ownership and autonomy in discovering her creativity, her inner landscapes.

Anne Swartz, Ph.D. Professor of Art History, Savannah College of Art and Design

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ARTIST STATEMENT Ah! The peonies For which Kusunoki Took off his armour Takarai Kikaku, 17th-century Japanese poet In this haiku, Kikaku refers to the famed 14th-century samurai warrior Kusunoki Masashige overcome by the beauty of the peony flower on the battlefield. He abandoned conflict and surrendered to pleasure.

In her famous book On Beauty and Being Just (2001), essayist Elaine Scarry opens a chapter with the following remarks: “Matisse never hoped to save lives.

But he repeatedly said he wanted to make paintings so serenely beautiful that when one came upon them, suddenly all problems would subside.”

next color, almost like the “call and response” form found in many musical traditions. There is a continuous orchestration, as the colors converse with one another, suggesting a mood or vibe. I am often not sure where it is going or going to go. It is a surprise at every turn. I shape my perception as I work.

I believe we shape the world around us through our perceptions, awareness, and attention. I would like to offer an invitation to awaken to beauty. When the viewer engages in a gratifying sensory experience that provides a moment of contemplation, the encounter transforms us even briefly. It is an effort through the viewing experience to fall below the level of thought.

Scarry suggests that beautiful things welcome us, restore “our faith in the world,” initiating a “forward momentum,” encouraging us to respond creatively and compassionately in the world. In a culture crowded with quick glimpses, beauty creates an “unselfing, uncentering” response. We enter a sensorial present, steered away from our “imaginary” central position.

For this exhibition, I chose to present textile work informed by the Korean art form known as Bojagi.

Humble in its origins, nameless women made these traditional textiles as often-extravagant visual pieces using mundane, left-over fabric from wrapping, storing, and transporting goods. Over time, the nobility introduced finer, more delicate cloth. In its traditional form, design characteristics include stitching and seams to create linear elements, especially with translucent fabrics. These features differentiate and distinguish Bojagi from patchwork textiles found in other cultural traditions. Nevertheless, Bojagi shares what feminist art historians identify as centuries-old histories of turning scraps of fabric into beautiful objects and ultimately shifting perspectives from private to public. I pay homage to these unknown women, authenticating their domestic work, and I affirm their values of inclusion, pleasure, love, the familial, the decorative, the colorful and joyful, the spiritual, and the everyday.

Whether in painting or textiles, my working instruments are rhythm and color. I am interested in the joyful, playful, or even spiritual properties of light. I am reflecting the light and color of where I live, of my immediate environment. This artistic practice is improvisational and process-oriented, abstract. The relationship of one color to another creates a rhythm and tempo and establishes the composition. Each color suggests the

My Bojagi-inspired textile work – painting with thread and fabric – honors the Korean tradition. Still, while relying on the conventions and basic structure, these pieces extend and interpret the Bojagi into a more contemporary form. I offer a new direction by varying medium and size and utilizing color compositions and stitching techniques less anchored to established methods. Material, color, texture, and transparency

Opposite page: Rambles & Reveries #1 of 6 (detail)

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The Body Is a Fiesta (detail)

are crucial elements in this work, as is the geometry inherent in the design. While geometry, in this case, emerges from a particular culture, the form does not demand a specific culture-dependent response. Its only function is beauty. It is about the sensual delight derived from looking; the viewer can ascribe or choose meaning, if at all.

As an order, rhythm, and pattern are generated within the geometry, creating beauty through harmony and stability, color dominates as a suggestive poetic force, concurrently evoking a connection to my immediate tropical environment. It sets as my intention arousing a sense of place, a feeling, and the atmosphere of an abstract garden, a walk through a field of flowers. The work in this exhibition is inspired explicitly by a palette of rose, pinks, reds, and fuchsia. Hibiscus, ginger, heliconia, anthurium, bougainvillea – local color! My intent is passion and vibrancy.

And, I am, indeed, suggesting a connection between beauty and flowers, as many have advocated. For example, environmental writer Michael Pollan points out in his book Botany of Desire that flowers first ushered the idea of beauty into the world when floral attraction emerged as an evolutionary strategy. He states, “People who were drawn to flowers, and who, further, could distinguish among them, would be much more successful foragers than people who were blind to their significance. In time the moment of recognition – much like the quickening one feels whenever spotting

a desired object in the landscape – would become pleasurable, and the signifying thing a thing of beauty.”

The idea is that sensual engagement with something tangible – in this case, colorful geometric textiles alluding to flowers–conjures an inspirational space to roam and dream.

This energizing space exists somewhere between the real and the imagined. The sensory pleasure mediated through the visual experience is, above all else, what I desire to bring forth in the viewer. Through my work, in general, and this exhibition, brilliant, intense color and texture restore beauty to its place as a vehicle for communicating humanist values, propelling us toward the good.

This approach has great significance. We know that “how we make choices, how we act, is deeply connected to states of consciousness, and so ‘anything which alters consciousness in the direction of unselfishness, objectivity and realism is to be connected with virtue.’” (Irish and British celebrated novelist Iris Murdoch commented, as quoted in Scarry.) No longer is a discourse about beauty taboo or regressive. Works of art – the visually perceived environment – and beauty, in particular, have the power to shape our lives. The pleasure derived from beautiful things inspires and guides our concern for ourselves, each other, and our world.

Yolanda Sánchez, Ph.D., MFA

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EXHIBITION IMAGES

Installation view of Yolanda Sánchez: The Earth Laughs in Flowers at Miami International Airport.

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Installation view of Yolanda Sánchez: The Earth Laughs in Flowers at Miami International Airport.

Pictured: Laughter in the Garden, 2021, Bojagi construction of nine panels, silk organza fabric and thread, dimensions variable, 60 x 24 inches (each panel).

There are always flowers for those who want to see them.

Henri Matisse

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Installation view of Yolanda Sánchez: The Earth Laughs in Flowers at Miami International Airport.

Pictured from left: Devoted, 2021 and Love Calls You by Your Name, 2021.

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Devoted 2021 silk organza remnants, thread 24 x 23 inches

Love Calls You by Your Name 2021 silk organza, thread, Bojagi construction 180 x 24 inches

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OVERVIEW OF RELATED WORKS (2014 - 2021)

Kisses from the Moon #1 through # 8 2021 oil on Arches paper 30 x 22 inches (each)

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For me, there was no gap between my painting and what is called my 'decorative' work…

I never considered the ‘minor arts’ to be artistically frustrating; on the contrary, it was an extension of my art, it showed me new ways, while using the same method.

Sonia Delaunay

The Body Is a Fiesta 2020 silk organza, thread, Bojagi construction 60 x 40 inches

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El Agua y Sus Sueños 2012 silk organza, thread, Bojagi construction dimensions variable Opposite page: El Agua y Sus Sueños (detail)

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Being There Together (Is Enough) 2019 oil on canvas 38 x 72 inches (diptych) 38 x 36 inches (each panel)

Opposite page: The Intensest Rendezvous (detail) 2019 oil on canvas 52 x 42 inches

I am writing as a person who comes from painting. By that I mean…you trust your colors and your shapes, your gestures. You trust that something beyond that will come through even if you don't know exactly what. You know that you are not just decorating the surface. You know that you are saying more…I would insist on the word abstract, or what people call non-figurative painting, which is like music. I like to reach a depth of meaning that has nothing to do with words even if I use words.

We want to tap a source from where the words come. There is a non-figurative or non-wordly world that is ours. Etel Adnan

Prelude to a Kiss 2019 oil on canvas 52 x 42 inches

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With a Full Heart 2016 silk organza fabric remnants; thread 32 x 52 inches

I never gave up painting, I’m a painter: I paint with different materials and even cross over to sculpture. It’s about being within the space. Sheila Hicks

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In the Mood for Love 2014 silk organza, thread, Bojagi construction 80 x 45 inches (approx.)

The Flower of a Thousand and One Nights 2016 oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches (diptych) 60 x 36 inches (each panel)

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Peace Piece 2014 oil on canvas 70 x 96 inches (triptych) 70 x 32 inches (each panel)

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All artwork is about beauty; all positive work represents it and celebrates it.

All negative art protests the lack of beauty in our lives.

Agnes Martin

Shanti 2021 silk organza fabric remnants, thread 24 x 24 inches

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Instructions for living: Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

Mary Oliver

ABOUT YOLANDA SÁNCHEZ

All Photos by Daniel Portnoy.

Born in Havana, Cuba, Yolanda Sánchez immigrated to the United States in February 1960. She obtained a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Florida State University and has practiced and taught psychology at the graduate level for over 30 years. In her mid-thirties, Dr. Sánchez returned to school, obtaining a BFA and subsequently, an MFA from Yale University in painting. She is a Fulbright scholar, completing her fellowship as a painter in Spain.

Most recently, she was a Visiting Scholar & Visiting Artist

at the American Academy in Rome, Italy. Sánchez has taught at Florida International University, the University of Miami, Nova University and Yale University. Currently, Dr. Sánchez is a working artist, exhibiting nationally and internationally in numerous venues. In New York, she is represented by Kathryn Markel Fine Arts. She is also a curator and writer, and formerly Director of Fine Arts & Cultural Affairs at Miami International Airport, a position she held for 21 years.

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Catalogue Design: Richard Etienne and Adrian Aguirre Miami-Dade Aviation Department, Marketing / Creative Services.