Celebrating a recent gift of thirty works by Jo Sandman (American, b. 1931), Jo Sandman: What Remains traces connections between the Boston-based artist’s use of found objects, unusual methods, and archaeological themes. Sandman transforms discarded facsimile and parchment paper, linen fabric, tape, tin foil, and x-rays across the works in this exhibition, which serve as visual records—and material remains—of her unique creative interventions.

Sandman’s turn to unconventional mediums and techniques was informed by her early training as a painter, first at Black Mountain College; then with Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell in New York City; and finally at UC Berkeley, where she earned her MFA in 1955. Although, for Sandman, painting had “exhausted itself” as a means of expression by the 1970s, its emphasis on form, material, and surface remains central to her artistic approach. This exhibition follows her subsequent experiments in collage, drawing, installation, and photography, as she began to employ subtractive processes of burning, cutting, exposing, folding, and scraping instead of applying paint.

Spanning her seven-decades-long career, the works in Jo Sandman: What Remains reveal histories, both of their own making and through their resemblances to ancient hieroglyphs, city plans, and architectural ruins. Indeed, archaeology and anthropology—interests nurtured at Black Mountain College—have long inspired Sandman’s imagery, notably the “primordial head-like forms” she refines from fragments of volcanic rock, and the calligraphic shapes she fashions from shredded housepainters’ tarps and cast-off snakeskins. When brought together, Sandman’s focus on “what remains”—of materials, artistic ideas, and humanity’s past—becomes the connective thread across her disparate art.

Jo Sandman: What Remains is organized by the Bruce Museum and curated by Jordan Hillman, Assistant Curator of Art.

Jo Sandman (American, b. 1931)
Untitled, Ignitions series, c. 2000
Wax paper on board, 17 x 14 in.
Bruce Museum, Gift of the Artist, 2025.03.11
© Jo Sandman
Photo by Paul Mutino

Jo Sandman (American, b. 1931)
Serpent #4, 2012–14
Platinum and palladium photogram translated into digital print on paper, 31 x 24 in.
Bruce Museum, Gift of the Artist, 2025.03.20
© Jo Sandman
Photo by Paul Mutino

Jo Sandman (American, b. 1931)
Thermal Drawing #3, 2007
Digital pigment print on paper, 14 x 10 ¾ in.
Bruce Museum, Gift of the Artist, 2025.03.15
© Jo Sandman
Photo by Paul Mutino

Jo Sandman (American, b. 1931)
Light Memory #2 (Self-Portrait), 2006
Sepia-toned gelatin silver print on paper, 19 7/8 x 23 7/8 in.
Bruce Museum, Gift of the Artist, 2025.03.26
© Jo Sandman
Photo by Paul Mutino

Jo Sandman (American, b. 1931)
Untitled, Foils series, c. 1973
Chalkboard paint and foil on paper, 15 x 18 in.
Bruce Museum, Gift of the Artist, 2025.03.10
© Jo Sandman
Photo by Paul Mutino

Jo Sandman (American, b. 1931)
Untitled, Tarp series, 1987
Painter's dropcloth mounted on museum board, 20 x 20 in.
Bruce Museum, Gift of the Artist, 2025.03.06
© Jo Sandman
Photo by Paul Mutino