A small collection of my experimental videos were screened this October at the Refocus Film Festival in Iowa City. To see my work up on the big screen is really wonderful! The sound, the images... but in addition, this morning I learned that Marya E. Gates from Roger Ebert Movie Reviews was watching them too. In her review of the incredible film festival, she writes: "Among my favorite acts that I saw were the experimental videos of Sandra Dyas, local rockers Silver Alexander (Marc Falk and Seth Petchers), and bowling-shirt-clad jazz duo Saul Lubraroff and Andy Parrott." How cool is this????
This fall, I have been invited by the Department of Art & Art History at Cornell College to exhibit a retrospective of my work in Luce Gallery for the Homecoming Show 2024.
Opening Reception: August 30, 4-6PM, Homecoming Reception: October 5, 3-5PM.
The exhibition will include The Lost Nation Photographs, Lost in the Midwest & Down to the River; Portraits of Iowa Musicians -- nearly 40 years of work!
This exhibition is in part generously supported by the Iowa Arts Council, The NEA and the IOWA Economic Development Grants.
Thank you to THE IOWA ARTS COUNCIL!
“The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way”.
— Diane Arbus
I am thrilled to be a recipient of an American Rescue Grant. This funding was made available through the Iowa Arts Council for 2021/22.
Currently I am working on making more portraits for Lost in the Midwest, an ongoing project which began in 2009. The funding will help cover expenses for producing more photographs from my archive as well as creating new works of art. It will also help fund the matting and framing of my work.
A major exhibition will be held at the Borzello Gallery, Knox College, Galesburg, IL in 2023/24. The exhibition was originally scheduled for early 2021 but has since been postponed twice because of Covid.
Thank you to the Iowa Arts Council for your continued support of my work.
Hudson River Gallery in Coralville, Iowa is exhibiting my newest body of collages, diptychs and triptychs. Opening Reception is March 4th, 6-8pm.
March 4 - April 2, 2022
Susan Coleman and myself have been exhibiting a body of work we call Earthly Beauty. Recently, this work was shown at the Waterloo Center for the Arts. Chawne Paige, curator and Elizabeth Andrews, Registrar conducted a video interview on Zoom with Susan and myself in place of having a reception in person. It is truly a "retrospective" interview!
December 22, 2020. A total of 267 cultural organizations and 152 artists serving 118 Iowa communities will receive a share of $7 million in grants announced today by the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs. As an individual artist and a member of the Iowa Arts Council, I applied and will receive $2500.
Gov. Kim Reynolds allocated the funding, made possible by the Coronavirus, Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, on Dec. 2. The department launched the Iowa Arts & Culture Recovery Program the same day and received more than 550 requests totaling more than $36 million by the Dec. 11 deadline.
I am honored and grateful to announce I have received an Iowa Arts Project Grant to help fund my newest work and homecoming exhibition at Luce Gallery, Cornell College. Funding from the Iowa Arts Council, a division of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs is made possible from Iowa Legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Sandra Dyas is a visual artist living in Iowa City. She received her MFA in Intermedia: Performance Art and Video from the University of Iowa in 1998. She is a Lecturer in Art at Cornell College, where she teaches photography, video and performance art.
It is my intent for my work to reveal the unspoken, the poetic, the immense mystery of being human. These photographs and experimental "moving poems" are a personal response to my inquiry into the human condition.
My work is influenced by my surroundings, both place and people. I am interested in landscape as it relates to us, what traces people have left behind in the landscape, the ghosts that inhibit a place.
We figure out who we are by knowing where we are. Our roots play a critical role in shaping who we become. The psychological and philosophical relationships formed between humans and the landscape is what inspires and drives me to make art.
Commissions, portrait sessions and photography workshops are available.
Please reach me by using the contact form to discuss rates, scheduling and more.