The whole visible universe is but a storehouse of images and signs to which the imagination will give a relative place and value; it is a sort of pasture which the imagination must digest and transform.                                               Charles Baudelaire, 1857

(left) A panorama picturing Sandrow returning 6 dozen (of the 10,000 exhibited in Water Life, pictured right) Moon snails to where they were collected after washing ashore (November 1997) was the first in the study Untitled Observations.

An environmental disaster that included thousands and thousands and thousands of marine and fish species beached along the waters edge: caused by strong ocean currents bouncing off a newly installed breakwater where she gathered the shells. In her studio, extricating the dead snails from inside; then the shells washed, oiled, hand numbered and sorted by variety, size and color into boxes the proportion of the golden rectangle. A proportion that also describes  the equiangular spiral of the Moon snail shell.

Sandrow appears in this image and others: as this investigation of time, of space and the observable universe is within the context of the collective life altering experience of “911”.  And a personal one: the practice of many artists such as Hannah Wilke, Van Gogh. And Munch. who’s self portraits document the increasing loss of vision in his right eye; Sandrow’s recovery of vision in her right eye.

above, Installation details, Within a Golden Rectangle: 10,000 Moon snails, Water Life in the trilogy Memories, Spaces, Time   Whitney Museum at Philip Morris 1998 Moon snails, Paper Boxes; (walls) Pigment Prints on Cotton Rag 26.5” x 40.5” Within a Golden Rectangle: Water and Clouds, Sea Gulls 1/3 Collection West Family; Three Clouds and Clouds, Tree, Water 1/3 Collection Whitney Museum

l, Untitled Observations March 8 commencing 6AM Self Portrait spacetime Mecox Inlet to the Atlantic Ocean  Watermill 

24” x 88”  Pigment Print on Cotton Rag 2006