Sandy Spieler
SANDY SPIELER is a sculptor, painter, graphic artist, performer/puppeteer, theatre director, teacher and perpetual student. Her work includes tiny puppet shows performed in a suitcase, community collaborative performances, performance installations, main stage theater productions, permanent public art commissions, teacher of countless performance residencies. She is one of the founders of In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre and served as its Artistic Director for 45 years. She was the director/midwife of the Annual Mayday Parade and Ceremony involving thousands of participants in her diverse urban home community in Minneapolis, USA and has also directed epic ritual performances in South Korea, Los Angeles, and the Dominican Republic, and sites throughout Minnesota. For over 40 years Sandy has created work about Water, including the on-going multi-faceted initiative “Invigorate The Common Well”. She is currently wonders what it means to enact a “theatre of inter-being.”
Sandy holds an MA of Cultural Performance from Bristol University England, studied puppetry arts at Bread and Puppet Theatre in Vermont, and Balinese masked dance at NYU. She is part of the International ECOARTS network. She is grateful for supportive awards over the years including the Bush Foundation’s Leadership and Artist Fellowships, the Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, and the McKnight Interdisciplinary Fellowship. She received two UNIMA-USA Citations of Excellence in the Art of Puppetry Award, and was named the 2014 “Distinguished Artist of the Year” from the McKnight Foundation.
Sandy asks that Art waken us to the “Wonder!?” of our everyday lives.
Check out her website at sandyspieler.com