Sanda Iliescu

ABOUT MY WORK

Give a child a stick and some mud on the ground and she will likely begin to draw. She might trace the outline of a shadow or make a sign she knows—for example, a circle or a letter. She might also invent rules for what she is doing. Rabbit goes hop-hop-hop, she might say as she dashes the stick across the ground. Above all she will play (and work) with the materials available to her. What is her drawing about? Does it communicate ideas, perhaps about her or about childhood or how and why we draw? Or is it simply about itself, a playful and joyful activity? In her book on the work of painter Philip Guston, art theorist Dore Ashton argued the latter, albeit with reservations. “Paintings are not about anything,” she wrote. “They are mysteriously themselves, self-consistent throughout history, warding off successive interpretations, and surviving rhetoric. Yet it is of some interest to speculate about about. And my own speculations keep circling about the significant (that is to say indispensable) conflict between estheticism and the world, or the events of the world.”

What is my artwork about? Like a child’s drawing, it is in some ways simply itself: something that grows from my love of making drawings, paintings, and collages. In other words, my artwork is about what I am doing as I make art—about the joyful activity of making marks on a flat surface. As I draw, even the simplest of marks has the power to move me and speak to me. A black point I make on a white surface might call out to me in a bold and confident voice, “Here I am!” A long line might invite me to follow it with my gaze. “Come with me,” it might say, “We’ll go on a journey!” A colored shape might have the opposite effect. “Stay still for a while,” it might say. “Be silent and simply see!”

But I do not make art just for my own enjoyment. My work is also my way of engaging and thinking about the world around me. From life I have learned that relationships between things often matter as much as things in themselves—that, for instance, people are best understood as unique individuals when the nature of their relationships with others is explored. I seek to convey an analogous sense of relatedness in my work. Formal relationships—for instance the way a red square lines up with a yellow one in another part of a drawing—can give an artwork a sense of order or balance. But such relationships can also be surprising, playful, or destabilizing. A square shape may suggest both a house and a blanket. A colored triangle may simultaneously reference a volcano and a party hat.

In my work, I wish to evoke the child’s sensibility and sense of wonder. Often, as a child does, I use the simplest of means: just water, paper, and paint—nothing fancy or extraordinary. Sometimes I incorporate materials from everyday life as well. Why not make collages with common office staples or assemble a picture of a tree from plastic trash-bags or make a drawing of a single blade of onion grass? In stitching such castaways together, I try to uncover relationships and reveal the peculiar blend of familiarity and strangeness of such ordinary materials.

But not all relationships are meant to be. My work is also about resistance and difficulty, about the impossibility of reconciling certain conflicts. The awkward brush stroke, the muddy color, the unexpected smudge, or scratchy scribble all have a place in my work. Ambiguity, uncertainty, surprise, and humor are important. Through such means I seek to challenge expectations and explore the porous boundaries between what are often seen as opposing categories—for instance, between fields and figures, or figuration and abstraction, or what Ashton called “estheticism and the world.” Ultimately, in my drawings, paintings, and collages, I strive to construct analogies to life: life with all its awkwardness and beauty, its messiness and precarity—life as it is lived today.

PUBLICATIONS
2023
Drawing Landscape and Poem Drawing, Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture, The University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design
“The Intertwining of the Sacred and the Secular”, Proceedings, Architecture Culture and Spirituality Forum, New York City
“The Color of Craft and City of the Mind”, The University of Virginia School of Architecture Journal
2022
Experiencing Art and Architecture: Lessons on Looking, London: Routledge
2019
“Art and Community: Making Public Art on a University Campus”, The University of Florida Graduate School of Architecture Journal
2018
“Material Memories”, Architecture Culture and Spirituality Forum, Coral Gables, FL
Manuel Bailo, “Against Indifference: Notes on the Drawings of Manuel Bailo”, Public Catalyst (Barcelona & NYC: Actar)
2017
“Contemplation and the Everyday: A Mural in a Public Bathroom”, Architecture Culture and Spirituality Forum, Deer Isle, ME
“Beginning with Collage: Towards an Open, Collaborative, and Interdisciplinary Way of Making”, Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah
2013
Ghazal Abbasy-Asbagh, “Un-painting: An Aleatoric Composition”, Barcelona & NYC: Actar D / UVA—Paper Matters
Phoebe Crisman and Peter Waldman, “Passages to India”, Charlottesville: UVA School of Architecture
2012
“Looking at Leonardo”, The University of Virginia School of Architecture Journal”
“100 Blue Bowls: Notes on Hana Kim’s Drawings”, UVA School of Architecture
2011
Robert Kahn, “Laocoön”, NYC: Fang Duff Kahn Publishers
“Openness, Incompleteness, and the Beauty of Margins”, The University of Virginia School of Architecture Journal
“Field-Making: Re-imagining the Figure Ground Problem”, College of Architecture, University of Nebraska
2008
“Beyond Cut & Paste: The Promise of Collage in Contemporary Design”, Journal of the University of CA, Berkeley / Routledge
2007
“The Garden as Collage: Rupture and Continuity in the Park Designs of Peter and Anneliese Latz”, John Dixon Hunt, University of Pennsylvania / Routledge
“Beauty and Ordinariness: Notes on the Photography of Kirk Martini”, The University of Virginia
Betsy Roettger, “The Gettysburg Address: 271 Words Painted on a Bridge”, UVA School of Architecture
2006
“The Black Box Project and Other Ways to Reintegrate Our Senses”, Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA),University of Texas at San Antonio
2000
R. Kahn, “Trajan’s Markets, Santo Stefano Rotondo, Ribera’s Venus and Adonis”, NYC: The Little Bookroom Press
1995
“Three Collage Series: Trash-Bag Trees, Swallows, and Winter Trees”, Catalog of the American Academy in Rome, Rome: Litografia Bruni-Pomezia

PRESS & REVIEWS
2023
Alice Berry, “This A-School Mural Gets a Boost from the Power of Pink”, UVA Today
Interview with Anahita Jafary, “Art Piece Honors Student-Athletes Killed on UVA Grounds”, NBC29 News
“Flying the Flag Darkly: Staff and Students Use Art to Ask Gun Violence Questions”, UVA Today
Dan Addison, “The Bigger Picture: The Environment’s ‘Fragile Beauty'”, UVA Today
2020
Laura Merricks, “Grief”, ArtWay, a European on-line publication
2018
Caroline Newman, “Imagining an Icon”, UVA Today
2016
“Lessons in Living with Sanda Iliescu: A Conversation about Failure and Growth”, Virginia Architecture Magazine
Ghazal Abbasy-Asbagh, “Interview with Sanda Iliescu”, Barcelona & New York: Actar D/UVA, Paper Matters
2014
Phoebe Crisman, “Reflections on a Drawing by Sanda Iliescu”, UC Berkeley Journal of the College of Environmental Design
“Cutlog 2014”, The Wall Street Journal International
2013
Robert Hull, “UVA Architecture Students Create ‘American Flag’ Art”, UVA Today
2011
Jane Ford, “Un-Painting Project is a Lesson in Public Art”, UVA Today
2010
A. J. Artemel, “Lines of Darkness & Light: Veiling of the Rotunda as Communal Act”, The Declaration, UVA student newspaper
“UVA Slaying Prompts Campus Safety Talks”, The Washington Post
“Death Spurs Day of Dialogue at UVA”, The Baltimore Sun
Brian McNeill, “UVA Set for Day of Dialogue”, The Daily Progress, Charlottesville, VA
Radio interview with Sandy Houseman, “Sanda Iliescu and the Day of Dialogue at UVA”, NPR
“The University Prepares for Day of Dialogue”, The Cavalier Daily, Charlottesville, VA
“Healing Talk: Event Encourages Examination of University Culture”, Virginia Magazine
2009
Jane Ford, “The Hand and the Soul: Iliescu, LeWitt, Slutzky”, UVA Today
Derry Wade, “Faculty, Students and Artists Work to Align ‘The Hand and the Soul'”, UVA Today
2008
David Maurer, “Get on the Bus”, The Daily Progress, Charlottesville, VA
Jane Ford, “The Fun Bus”, UVA Today
2006
“Flying High”, The Daily Progress, Charlottesville VA
“Public Art Project: UVA Professors Celebrate Money Point Clean-Up Plan”, Inside UVA
William Fried, “The Self-portraits of Sanda Iliescu: An Interface”, The UVA School of Architecture Journal
2005
Jane Ford, “Beta Bridge Art Project Counters Intolerance”, Inside UVA
Carlos Santos, “Interview on Beta Bridge”, The Richmond Times Dispatch
Melanie Meyhew, “University Students Make Statement on Beta Bridge”, The Daily Progress, Charlottesville, VA
Sam Stoller, “Four Score…”, The Cavalier Daily, Charlottesville, VA
2004
“Between Ethics and Aesthetics”, Explorations: Research Highlights from the University of Virginia
2002
Jane Ford, “Iliescu’s Art is Metaphor for Democracy”, Inside UVA
1996
Brian Brooks, “Seminar Instructor of the Year”, The Post & Lintel, UNC Charlotte, Charlotte, NC
1993
Richard Maschal, “Making Her Own Space: Refugee, Homeless Student, UNCC Teacher”, The Charlotte Observer, Charlotte, NC
“Rome Prize Winners are Announced”, The New York Times
1991
Vivien Raynor, “Creations by Fellowship Winners”, The New York Times
“A Ten Story Office Tower in Ridgefield Park, NJ”, Cleveland OH: Penton Publishing Inc.

SELECTED ART & DESIGN REVIEWS
2021
Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville
2018
NC State University
2017
Tulane University
2007,1997
University of Pennsylvania
1994
Tyler School of Art, Temple University