Sandow birk

Los Angeles artist Sandow Birk is a well-traveled graduate of the Otis/Parson's Art Institute His works are frequently developed as expansive, multi-media projects, that have dealt with contemporary life in its entirety. With an emphasis on social issues, frequent themes of his past work have included inner city violence, graffiti, political issues, travel, war, and prisons, as well as surfing and skateboarding. He was a recipient of an NEA International Travel Grant to Mexico City in 1995 to study mural painting, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996, and a Fulbright Fellowship for painting to Rio de Janeiro for 1997. In 1999 he was awarded a Getty Fellowship for painting, followed by a City of Los Angeles (COLA) Fellowship in 2001. In 2007 he was an artist in residence at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, and at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2008. His most recent project involves a consideration of the Qur’an as relevant to contemporary life in America.

Birk has been working with Mullowney Printing founder Paul Mullowney since 2005 when his ambitious set of ten gravures, The Leading Causes of Death in America was published by HuiPress, on the island of Maui.  They went on to collaborate, along with Birk’s partner and collaborator, Elyse Pignolet, on the groundbreaking set of fifteen monumental woodcut prints, The Depravities of War, a strong comment on the United States’ invasion of Iraq, based on Jaques Callot’s Miseries of War etchings of 1633. 

Since the inception of those projects, Mullowney Printing has teamed with Birk’s longtime representative, Catharine Clark Gallery, in San Francisco, to continue to co-publish, numerous large scale print projects including  the Imaginary Monument set of four direct gravure etchings, starting with  Monument to the Constitution of the United States, an expansive nine panel gravure etching, published in 2011.

Sandow Birk and his wife, Elyse Pignolet have also collaborated on the recent monumental print project published by Mullowney Printing,  American Procession, a multi panel image printed from twenty woodcut panels, seamed together to create a forty foot long triptych.

Sandow Birk is represented by Catharine Clark Gallery.  Both he and Elyse Pignolet are also represented by Koblin Del Rio Gallery.  They live and work in Long Beach, California, with their children Zara and Tejo.

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