ARTIST BIO

Blakeney Sanford (b. 1979, California) is a multimedia sculptor, photographer, and conceptual artist. Her work, in blue, explores the boundaries between natural and man-made environments: micro, macro, meta.

A lifetime spent in rural environments informs her practice. Her passion for the natural world, coupled with an affinity for discovery and innovation, has led to diverse bodies of work which incorporate industrial materials, large-scale land art, immersive sculpture, and conceptual processes.

Sanford studied studio art and mathematics as an undergraduate earning her BFA in Human Ecology and is otherwise self-taught. She has exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, most recently in Egypt’s Museum of Ancient Civilization, New York’s Oculus, and in the Cotswolds District of Western England.

Find out more about Blakeney HERE

PORTALS STATEMENT

The Portals series is an ever-expanding, environmental installation project that explores concepts of interconnectivity and transformation across time, space, cultures, and terrestrial landscapes.

The work itself is its own narrative. Using physical and digital elements, it tells a story, weaving together landscapes and regions, individuals and communities, all connected through a visual mantra: The Portal.

The project involves the physical siting of a Portal sculpture – an iconic, translucent blue, rectilinear form – in natural spaces throughout the world. Existing as both permanent and ephemeral pieces, each installation location is documented using multiple technologies including photography and videography. Work from the series is released in expanding dimensions: 2D archival imagery and Polaroid “Proof of Moment”, 3D sculptures in situ, and video work that lives, in perpetuity, on the blockchain.

The Portals project began in 2020 and in four years has appeared in over fifty locations around the world. As the physical installations continue to expand, the next phase of the project includes the development of data visualization models to illustrate the layered networks forming within each dimensional field.

As the series evolves, my hope is that The Portals, in their many forms, inspire a web of connection between the individual, the collective, the natural world, and the metaphysical beyond.