Sandra Monday grew up in a small town in north Florida called Crescent City. The only child of a sixteen-year-old mother from a German immigrant family, and a Native American/Irish Father who was a Vietnam vet. She was always considered strange by the other kids, ridiculed in high school and physically abused by her mother; only to move away at the age of seventeen to pursue a dream in the Theatre. She always loved painting, drawing and writing poetry, climbing trees, farming and also excelled at dance. As an only child, she lived in a world of complete imagination and fantasy.
She received an A.S. Cum Laude in Theatre from Florida School of the Arts, and then later went to the University of Central Florida to receive a BA in Theatre. She was the very first person in her entire family to receive a bachelor's degree.
During this time in the mid to late 90's she spent many evenings in coffee houses like Yab Yum, Java Jabbers and The Grind. In meeting and hanging out with other artists such as David Jones, Carl Knickerbocker, Scott Hawley, Jason Morales, Terry Davis and Scramble Cambell; she was greatly influenced. During 1995 she also wrote for a paper known as Tabula Rasa, represented the well-known artist David Jones, and also did music reviews for Jam Magazine. It was here with the urban bohemia of the mid-nineties, she rediscovered her love of the visual medium. She would watch live painting events with Scramble Cambell and Terry Davis and even formed her own art happening group known as the "Recycadelics"
The Recycadelics created unusual pieces using recycled products in front of a live audience. One Recycadelics event was in the Roxy nightclub and included dancing and a Christ like statue spray painted gold and suspended from the ceiling while Sandra Monday danced covered in paint.
After childbirth kept her at home and performance poetry became more difficult, she returned to her first childhood love, painting. She considers herself an outsider artist because she does not allow her work to be dictated by pop-art or what is considered to be in style by the interior decorators. She paints to say something; if it looks pretty too, that is an added bonus. She paints for herself to make sense of her own unconscious mind and hopefully to bring some color to the world. It is also her deeply held conviction that the artist must offer a valid interpretation of their own work and not leave it completely up to the viewer to make that distinction. Sandra believes any artist who proclaims "What do YOU think it means?" is merely copping out of the arduous task of defining the work themselves; indeed because the work has no meaning or value at all to the so-called artist. This is because it is merely a product or craft and not a work of art. Art should be fine and should have a meaning, a story and a purpose. If it disturbs a bit then it is indeed art because art's purpose is to FINE-tune the senses and the mind. If art is not fine, what is it? In art there is never a case for mediocrity, for art is the one field that the unique and authentic should be given precedence. It should be the one place where the "nerds" finally rule.
Sandra Monday is also in the punk band The June Cleavers.
see www.myspace.com/thejunecleavers2
