Artist Sandra Muss aims to illustrate the choices we make throughout our lives through her nature-inspired abstracts
Ever since she was a young girl, artist Sandra Muss has been rummaging around the woods for natural treasures. She’s still rooted in the woods at her northern studio, a converted, 19th-century lumber mill in the Berkshires, while her trove has grown to encompass all sorts of found objects for her multimedia works.
“The writer and artist Bruce Helander described me as ‘a scavenger of beauty,’” said Muss, a snowbird who also runs her international art career from New York and a warehouse in Miami Beach’s Sunset Harbour. “Like I found a piece of scrap metal that I think was used to test car paint. I left it outside for a while to get more of a patina and will manipulate it into a new entity.”
THE DOORS TO THE FUTURE
Though painting was her first love, Muss has been on a roll with large-scale sculptures that often incorporate sound and an ongoing series based on repurposed wooden door frames and fabricated, mirrored steel frames. Enter Pulse art fair director Cristina Salmastrelli, who selected some of these installations for the 2019 edition in December. Portals: Dream of Flight, which premiered at Belmond Villa San Michele hotel outside Florence to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death this year, will be placed at the fair’s entrance. Because da Vinci experimented with flight at the Tuscan site, Muss pays homage through 10-foot-tall, cylindrical sculptures of Corten steel whose cutouts resemble cicada wings. Recorded cicada songs pipe from the works for an immersive connection.
“The mirrored interiors reflect their environment and people around them. They’re designed to explore the complex relationship between humans and nature,” she said of her serendipitous foray into Miami art week that also includes the equally philosophical “Open Doors” on view at Pulse’s hotel partner Eden Roc. “The doors are about pathways to ourselves and other worlds — to wherever you want to go.”
Muss is fascinated by the magical world that exists within the wardrobe in “The Chronicles of Narnia” by C.S. Lewis. She hopes to recreate the same sense of wonder with her door series and enjoys watching people obsessively try to figure out what’s behind them. For Pulse, there are seven repurposed wood doors with mirror and neon. “They have the elements of exploration, new worlds and new possibilities,” she said, planning to exhibit different versions at Artscape Lab, a gallery in the mainland’s Little River district, in February.
A NATURAL WOMAN
Like many of us, Muss is concerned about the political climate and the actual climate and is developing several concepts that expand on her signature motifs and materials.
“But I’d also like to do something about climate change,” said Muss, who’s every bit the nature girl she was as a kid. “I look at Biscayne Bay with all the high rises, and there’s still so much nature. It’s important for us to be part of the natural world.”