For this series I have created a cast of my own likeness. Rather than substituting a generalized female form to make sweeping proclamations about motherhood, I am making stories using myself as the protagonist. My training as a puppet builder informs my use of materials and approach to creating this series. The 30-inch figures are made of a slush-moldable papier mache that resembles porcelain. They are “glazed” using oil-based polyurethane which seeps into the porous material for additional strength. These cast pieces are then assembled with a steel armature. There is something symbolic about creating “porcelain dolls” that are actually made of far tougher stuff.
Installation on view at New York Artist’s Equity for the exhibition The Winter’s Palace February 2023.
Persistent Mothers in the exhibition Domestic Brutes at The Pelham Art Center. On view from September 12 to November 7th, 2020.
Persistent Mothers features three characters, cast from the same mold, that show the transition from youth to maturity.
Figures are 3o inches tall. Installation, flexible.
Hubbard, refereeing to the “Old Lady” from the nursery rhyme, is the eldest character in Persistent Mothers.
The figure Devi Mom illustrates a mother’s need to have so many hands available. Here these heavy, sawdust filled appendages are looped around the mother’s neck like snakes. Her head is adorned with the letters M-O-M in thread wrapped around toothpicks sprouting horsehair.
30 x 16 x 12 inches
mixed media
27 x 17 x 17 inches
Created mid-pandemic, this piece exemplifies how Mums carry the house on their backs.
“The Mother” character in myth and religion has been established as series of architypes that embody society’s expectations of Mothers. As Carl Jung said, these architypes form “treasure in the realm of shadowy thoughts” in our collective unconscious. Inspiration for these pieces comes from research into universal stories including the hero’s journey and personal introspection. From Madonna to whore, Kali to Befana, Gaia to Lilith, mothers are both sacred and terrifying. This series of sculptures explores this mythology. There is power in representation and I hope to empower other mothers to see ourselves as the powerful bad asses we are.
Mixed Media 2019
Missing Peace allows the viewer to peer inside the blackness of this figure’s head.
Each 10 x 6 x 6 inches
The Chimera is a monster in Greek mythology composted of dispirit parts, but over time the meaning has evolved to become a thing that is desired but impossible to achieve.This series of mixed media paintings on canvas use imagery from Americana, the zodiac, and film stills as a stepping off place reflective of nature’s wonder and the challenges of climate change, political corruption, and weight of history. This watery dystopia is rife with political symbolism and wistful magical realism.
These richly layered canvases are built by using photo transfers, acrylic paint, stitching, antique lace, buttons, fabric, and vintage patches. The imagery is assembled through original photography, images of historical monuments, and barrowed texture from etchings from the 16th and 17th centuries.
Mixed media on canvas
72 x 72 inchges
Mixed media on canvas
46 x 72 inches
Mixed media on Canvas
44 x 72 inches
Mixed Media on Canvas
44 x 60 inches
mixed media on stretched canvas
30 x 36 inches
mixed media on canvas
44 x 72 inches
Mixed Media on Canvas
78 x 44 inches
mixed media on canvas
72 x 44 inches
mixed media on canvas
44 x 72 inches
Mixed Media on Canvas
44 x 72 inches
mixed media on canvas
44 x 72 inches
Mixed media on stretched canvas
44 x 30 inches
Mixed Media on canvas
40 x 60 inches
Mixed media on Canvas
37 x 18 inches
Mixed media on canvas
16.5 x 20.5 framed
Mixed Media on Canvas
27 x 33 inches
Mixed media on Wood Board
12 x 9 inches
GESTURE is a memorial installation comprised of almost 3000 individual paintings, one for each person lost on September 11, 2001. In the years since then GESTURE has been shown frequently throughout the United States.
In honor of the 20th Anniversary GESTURE was exhibited at The Pelham Art Center. All 2,977 painting were exhibited for this solo exhibition.
Eight hundred and fifty GESTURE paintings were exhibited at The National September 11th Memorial Museum for close to two years in honor of the 15th anniversary of the attacks in the exhibition Rendering The Unthinkable:Artists Respond to 9/11.
It was an honor to meet Michael Bloomberg, Chairman of Board, The National September 11th Memorial Museum.
A conversation between Chris Wink of The Blue Man Group, Manju Shandler, Christopher Saucedo about Rendering the Unthinkable moderated by Cliff Chanin.
TSUNAMI & LEVIATHANSis a series of large narrative paintings and mixed media works created in 2011 in response to Japanese tsunami and the resulting nuclear disaster. The imagery was created by using a mash up of Japanese flood photojournalism juxtaposed with renaissance masterpieces and 18th century etchings of whaling- one of the first super fuels.
Mixed Media on Canvas, 2024
each section 30 x 44 inches
2018
Mixed Media
23 x 19 inches
2018
Mixed Media
23 x 19 inches
2011
mixed media on polyester film
42 x 60 inches
2011
mixed media on polyester film
42 x 60 inches
2012
mixed media
42 x 60 inches
Leviathans 3
2012
mixed media
42 x 60 inches
2012
Mixed media
45 x 34 inches
40 x 30 inches
Acrylic, charcoal, and gesso on canvas
Sewn polyester film and vinyl on paper
20.75 x 16.75 inches framed black wood
Sewn polyester film and vinyl on paper
20.75 x 16.75 inches framed black wood
Sewn polyester film and vinyl on paper
20.75 x 16.75 inches framed black wood
Sewn polyester film and vinyl on paper
20.75 x 16.75 inches framed black wood
Sewn polyester film and vinyl on paper
20.75 x 16.75 inches framed black wood
WHAT WOULD GEORGE DO?
As citizens how do we unpack our nations complicated past and more pressing future without becoming uprooted from our foundational ideals of Liberty, Justice, Freedom, and Equality for all? As artists how do we create symbols that will inspire and enlighten?
In 2024, I created a life sized “Elephant in the Room.” This friendly and pensive beast invites the viewer to question their own subconscious worries and examine current history.
“WHAT WOULD GEORGE DO?” features The Founding Father’s adrift as sea, stitched to their flag, immersed in a quagmire of consumerism, asking one another what to do. Perhaps they feel just as lost as the rest of us?
PRIVILEGE ≠ JUSTICE and LADY JUSTICE features this symbol of the legal system bravely holding balances with swords drawn in rough seas.
And numerous pieces feature George Washington, whose likeness has become the epitome of American nationalism, sometimes on a horse, drawn in multiples, going in a circular Merry-Go-Round of the question – “WHERE’S OUR WHITE HORSE?”
Washing Head 1 & 2 are sculptures composed of a George Washington Halloween masks inflated with expanding foam, exploding from the orifices, encased in a mat tar-like substance and adorned with feathers, beads, thread, and 100 price tags painted with a sea of green grass and stormy skies.
The Elephant in the Room, 2024
Exhibited at The Barn on Berme, Summer 2024
72 × 72 inches
mixed media
64 × 32 inches
mixed media
2017, 42 x 34 inches, mixed media
Manju Shandler, 2017
Mixed media (graphite, India Ink, acrylic paint, gesso, and charcoal on polyester film) 36 x 36 inches
Manju Shandler, 2017
Mixed media (graphite, grease pencil, India ink, acrylic and spray paint, gesso, charcoal, pastel, cotton thread on two layers of sewn and printed polyester film)
36 x 37 inches
at ABC NO RIO in EXILE
In the Bardo
December 2018
Bushwick Store Front Window
Lady Justice, 2018
Mixed Media (India ink, charcoal, grease pencil, acrylic & spray paint, on dyed paper)
36 x 44 inches
Manju Shandler, 2017
Mixed media (graphite, grease pencil, India ink, acrylic and spray paint, gesso, charcoal, pastel, cotton thread on two layers of sewn and printed polyester film)
51 x 36 inches
Mixed Media
26 x 20 x 8 inches
Mixed Media
24 x 20 x 10 inches
Mixed Media
16 x 16 x 14 inches
Artists Statement
THE COLONIZATION OF RED JUNGLE FOWL is an exhibition focused on chickens, eggs, and nests in relationship to colonialism, slavery, sexual politics, and the industrialization of natural resources. I am specifically interested in how our treatment and manipulation of this animal reveals parallels in the treatment of conquered populations and disregarded women.
Descended from Southeast Asia, Red Jungle Fowl was the wild ancestor of domesticated chicken breeds. Human were attracted to this bird for their meat, lack of flight, and ability to lay eggs daily. In ancient times the Egyptians developed a sophisticated system of incubating eggs but it was not until the development of fortified feed that chickens were again bread in mass scale. Today, chickens are cultivated for maximum efficiency in producing meat and eggs. The poultry industry is one of the main protein sources for human kind, with roughly 55 million chickens consumed daily worldwide.
As the Red Jungle Fowl became domesticated cock fighting became a popular blood sport. While roosters may naturally scrap in the farmyard competing for dominance, with cock fighting, humans engineered a deeply sinister metamorphosis. By fostering the rooster’s aggressiveness, grooming them for violence by fastening knives to their talons and awarding a monetary gain to the victor’s owner, we start to see parallels to much of our species’ complicated intervention in natural order.
In popular culture chickens have been largely mocked for their perceived stupidity and are often the brunt of the most mundane jokes and fables - Why did the chicken cross the road? etc. We do not have to look far to unearth similar jokes made at the expense of colonized and enslaved peoples.
In essence the story of poultry farming is not a unique tale of evolution or industrialization. Parallels can be made to another types of consumption – slavery, colonization, and dominance over women. In its most distilled forms each of these narratives feature resources mined and consumed for maximum effect. I have incorporated appropriated imagery of whaling ships into these mixed media artworks. My depiction of whaling ships transport the fragile commodities of eggs and balloons while reminding the viewer of slave ships.
When thinking of colonialism and immigration it is inevitable to also think of questions of home and safety. Hens are famous for their broodiness, a desire to create a nest for their young. We capitalize on these most fertile mothers and the female instinct to create life. THE COLONIZATION OF RED JUNGLE FOWL asks how are mothers overlooked? In our largely patriarchal society, how is the role of homemaker and mother valued? How important are safe nests and homes? Who is building and providing protection for our young?
THE COLONIZATION OF RED JUNGLE FOWL enacts a nuanced fable laced with an ongoing narrative of evolution and feverish consumption. In creating this artwork I rely equally on my background as a professionally trained puppet builder and as an intuitive, self-taught painter.
Ice Cream Social Art in Port Chester, NY
2022
Installation at the Governor’s Island Art Fair September 2016.
Installation is suspended from chains and takes up approximately 48 by 24 by 64 inches.
Cast plastic rooster head, foams, aluminum mesh, toothpicks, thread, tulle, wire, spray paint, ostrich feathers, glass beads, pins, bamboo, and poly extruded styrene
48 by 24 by 32 inches
Cast plastic rooster heads, foams, aluminum mesh, toothpicks, thread, tulle, wire, spray paint, ostrich feathers, glass beads, pins, bamboo, and poly extruded styrene
48 by 24 by 32 inches
THE COLONIZATION OF RED JUNGLE FOWL, 2018
One of Three paintings each 40 by 72 inches
THE COLONIZATION OF RED JUNGLE FOWL, 2018
India ink, white and black gesso, acrylic and spray paint, grease pencil, soft pastel, cotton thread and trim, printed and sewn translucent polyester film on mat polyester film.
Painting in three panels
Each 40 inches by 72 inches
On display at The Arno Maris Gallery
Mixed Media
40 x 40 inches
Mixed Media
40 x 40 inches
Eight Paintings each 18 x 18 inches hung in a grid that measures 80 x 40 inches
BEHEMOTH is a collection of work that probes questions of nationalism and the psychological significance attached to the visual symbolism of flags by rendering the symbols meaningless, reminiscent of painted clowns or enthusiastic sports fans.
Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Belarus, Cameroon, Chad, Central African Republic, Cuba, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Burma, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Swaziland, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Tajikistan, Uganda, Russia, Iraq, Yemen, Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angolia, and Algeria
2014
Acrylic paint, India ink, cotton thread and yarn on printed and sewn polyester film mounted on paper
42 x 42 inches
Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Sudan
2014
Acrylic paint, India ink, cotton thread and yarn on printed and sewn polyester film mounted on paper
42 x 42 inches
Laos, China, Cuba, Viet Nam, & North Korea
2014
Acrylic paint, India ink, cotton thread and yarn on printed and sewn polyester film mounted on paper
42 x 42 inches
Russia, Saudi Arabia, United States, Iran, China, Canada, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Mexico, and Kuwait
2014
Acrylic paint on printed polyester film, cotton thread and steel wire
30 by 21 by 3 inches
Acrylic paint and printed polyester film sewn to paper
18 by 18 inches
2014
Greece, France, Switzerland, Germany, United States, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Puerto Rico, Turkey, Cameroon, Madagascar, Syria, Thailand, Chile, Spain, Somalia, Bangladesh, Great Britain, Togo, Vietnam, Jamaica, Turkey, Greenland, Ghana, Guyana, Colombia
2013
Acrylic paint, glass beads, feathers, lace, and fabric trim on printed and sewn polyester film mounted on paper with a foam core base
Installation is flexible, here shown covering an area of approximately 10 x 4 feet
China, India, United States, Indonesia, Brazil, and Pakistan
Acrylic paint on printed polyester film, cotton thread and trim, paper and steel mesh and wire
16 by 20 by 12 inches
2013
2013
Acrylic paint and glass beads on printed and sewn polyester film mounted on paper
40 x 26 x 1 inches
An on going project of smaller, affordable works on paper and canvas..
Contact me to purchase.
Acrylic mediums, transfer printing, quilting, thread, on canvas, in maple frame
16.75 x 12.75 inches
Acrylic mediums, transfer printing, glass beads, quilting, thread, on canvas, in maple frame
12.75 x 16.75 inches
Acrylic mediums, transfer printing, thread, on canvas, in maple frame
16.75 x 20.75 inches
Acrylic mediums, transfer printing, thread, on canvas, in maple frame
20.75 x 16.75 inches
Acrylic mediums, transfer printing, thread, on canvas, in maple frame
16.75 x 20.75 inches
Acrylic mediums, transfer printing, thread, on canvas, in maple frame
10.75 x 8.75 inches
Acrylic mediums, transfer printing, thread, on canvas, in maple frame
10.75 x 8.75 inches
Acrylic mediums, transfer printing, thread, on canvas, in maple frame
10.75 x 8.75 inches
Images from various theatrical design projects.
2015, 2012, 2009, 2015
Production Design (Costumes, Masks, and Puppets)
Choreographers Lisa Reinhart & Margret Hickey
2011‐2008
LABA‐ The 14th St Y ‐ Artist In Residence
Creator, Artistic Director, Puppet, Costume & Set Design
A Wonderfully Flat Thing
2002‐03
Radio City Music Hall – Carnivale Spectacular
Associate Masquerade Costume and Puppet Design
Design Peter Minshall
The Neverbird/Peter Pan 360
Puppet Design & Construction for 11 foot wide wingspan character
Gale Gates Et Al – 1839
Specialty Costume and Puppet Design
Director Michael Counts
