Luca Curci talks with Sandy Brown Jensen during the LONDON CONTEMPORARY 2022 – 4TH EDITION, at THE LINE Contemporary Art Space.

Oregon photographer Sandy Brown Jensen is the co-host for Viz City, KLCC’s Arts Review Program. Sandy’s MFA is in Poetry, and she has retired from a career in teaching college writing. Her interest in imagistic poetry hasn’t changed, but she has moved from the pen to the camera. Her primary interest is in Photography Églomisé or gilded photography. Sandy lives in Eugene, Oregon. She is happily married to her Shakespeare scholar husband, Peter, and they are ruled by two cats in a house not too far from the Willamette River. She is an avid hiker and backpacker as well as a passionate home cook. Her favorite city is Paris.

LC – What is art for you?
SBJ – For me, art is the expression of my interior life using my creative skills in photography and gilding to produce works to be loved for their beauty and emotional power.

LC – How did you get to your current artistic practice?
SBJ – I photograph then print on transparency film which I then gild on the back with 24K gold. I initially learned a version of this from an artist in sunny, dry New Mexico using vellum paper. However, I live in a humid climate, so the paper would not lie flat. My technical journey was to solve this and other problems such as how to gild.

LC – Where do you find your inspiration?
SBJ – I find my inspiration in memory, dreams, reflections as they appear in my camera out of the dream that is the world, whether street or landscape. I use a LensBaby creative lens that helps me fold, double, and layer images in the camera.

LC – How is being an artist nowadays?
SBJ – There has never been a better time to be an artist. Opportunities to show and to sell are everywhere. As always, the artist has to have a strong entrepreneurial spirit to join into the fluid state of today’s market.

LC – Do you use art to express something in particular? Is it your medium of expression?
SBJ – I use gilded photography to express the place where my interior state meets the beauty of the world. My interests are neither social nor political but spiritual and aesthetic. I bring “spirit gold.”

LC – In which way the artwork presented in our exhibition is connected with the exhibition’s theme?
SBJ – I was invited to be inspired by the magical power of London, exploring the connection between desires, needs, and fears through rituals that bring humankind to change, transform and evolve their inner world. I brought powerful symbols of a transcendent heart to the show, mysterious and uplifting: Raven who flies between the living and the dead, the sun setting on the very edge of the world as the terminator line sweeps over us all.

LC – Can you explain something about the artworks you have in our exhibition?
SBJ – I use a process called Photography Églomisé that uses a transparency film as the print substrate, and then I gild it in various kinds of metal leaf such as gold, silver, palladium, and copper. My colors and subjects are drawn from the saturated landscapes of the far US West.

LC – Did you enjoy cooperating with us? 
SBJ – I felt privileged to be asked by ItsLiquid to show at the October 2022 London Contemporary Art Fair. I met so many wonderful people from all over the world. The LINE Contemporary Art Space was large and showed a lot of art to advantage. I could tell the public enjoyed entering into that space and interacting with the art and artists.

LC – Would you suggest a collaboration with us? What do you think about our services?
SBJ – I was very impressed and appreciative of the hard work of Amaride, Giulia, Max and Luca, who are the representatives of ItsLiquid and the London Contemporary Art Fair I met and interacted with. They were at all times forthcoming and well organized. Everyone worked together to make this show the success it was.

LC -What is your idea about ITSLIQUID GROUP?
SBJ – Its Liquid is a company that specializes in staging art fairs in major metropolitan cities, and it has been doing this work very well for over twenty years. I found my association to be positive and professional. My art was taken seriously and handled and shown at the venue with respect.