Sheila Pinkel (born 1941) is an American visual artist, activist and educator whose practice includes experimental light studies, photography, conceptual and graphic works, and public art.Muchnic, Suzanne. "Wilshire Center," Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1982.Leddy, Pat. " Sheila Pinkel at Pomona College," Artweek, May 1996, p. 27-28.Matthews, Sandra. "Courage in the Face of History: Cross-Cultural Portraits," in Masquerade - Women's Contemporary Portrait Photography by Kate Newton and Christine Rolph (eds.), Cardiff, UK: Ffotogallery, 2003. Retrieved January 20, 2021. She first gained notice for cameraless photography begun in the 1970s that used light-sensitive emulsions and technologies to explore form;Kienholz, Lyn. L.A. Rising: SoCal Artists Before 1980, Los Angeles: The California / International Arts Foundation, 2010, p. 363. Retrieved January 20, 2021.Nicholson, Chuck. "Nuclear Visions," Artweek, April 24, 1982, p. 13–4.Ho, Yin. "Sheila Pinkel, Higher Pictures Generation," Artforum, October 27, 2017. her later, socially conscious art combines research, data visualization, and documentary photography, making critical and ethical inquiries into the military-industrial complex and nuclear industry, consumption and incarceration patterns, and the effects of war on survivors, among other subjects.Zoeckler, Lyndy. "Making a Protest," Artweek, December 3, 1983, p. 4.Von Blum, Paul. Other Visions, Other Voices: Women Political Artists in Greater Los Angeles, Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1994. Retrieved January 20, 2021.Pagel, David. "'Indochina: The Art of War' Exhibition Misfires," Los Angeles Times, April 25, 2001. Retrieved January 21, 2021.Halliday, Amy. Made in America: unfree labor in the age of mass incarceration, Amherst, Massachusetts: Hampshire College Art Gallery. 2017. Writers identify an attempt to reveal the unseen—in nature and in culture—as a common thread in her work.Butler, Eugenia P. "The Technological Object and the Handmade Object," The Kitchen Table, Los Angeles: The Box Gallery, 2018, p. 223-260; 422.Kevles, Bettyann Holtzmann. Naked to the Bone: Medical Imaging in the Twentieth Century, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997, p. 281–2. Retrieved January 19, 2021.
Pinkel has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Center for the Study of Political Graphics and National Endowment for the Arts, among others.Museum of Contemporary Photography. Untitled, from the "Site Unseen: Light Works" series, Collection. Retrieved January 20, 2021.The Argonaut. "Photography exhibit combining three distinct subjects presented at Emeritus College Art Gallery in Santa Monica," February 17, 2011. Retrieved January 29, 2021. She has exhibited internationally and her work belongs to public collections including those of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art,Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Sheila Pinkel, Collections. Retrieved January 25, 2021. Centre Pompidou,Centre Pompidou. Sheila Pinkel (1941, États-Unis) Kachina Transform, Collections. Retrieved January 29, 2021. Hammer Museum,Hammer Museum. Sheila Pinkel, Digital Archives. Retrieved January 29, 2021. and Museum of Contemporary Photography. In addition to her art, Pinkel has written for journals including Leonardo,Leonardo. Sheila Pinkel, Contributors. Retrieved January 29, 2021. AfterimagePinkel, Sheila. "To Dream the Impossible Dream," Afterimage, 37(3), 2009, p. 42. and Heresies,Pinkel, Sheila. "Toward a Synthetic Art Education," Heresies, #25, 7(1), 1990, p. 66–7. and taught at Pomona College in Claremont, California.Pomona College. Sheila Pinkel, People. Retrieved January 29, 2021. She lives and works In Los Angeles.
Early life and career Sheila Mae Pinkel was born in Newport News, Virginia in 1941 and raised in Cleveland and Los Angeles. Her father was a scientist who worked on confidential nuclear projects, something she only later learned of in the course of her research and artmaking on the subject; her grandfather was a ILGWU labor organizer, a fact also relevant to her work.Pohl, Frances K. "Work in the Art of Sheila Pinkel: An Interview," Kunst Und Politik: Jahrbuch Der Guernica-Gesellschaft, Schwerpunkt: Kunst und Arbeit – Art and Labor. V&R Unipress, 2005, p. 171–93. As a woman growing up in the Nuclear Age and being close to those working in the industry she had quite the view of its ravaging effect on the world. Between the bombing of Hiroshima and the Cold War, Pinkel she was surrounded by a culmination of first world cruelty. This greatly impacted her art. In 1959, she enrolled at University of California Berkeley, attracted to its reputation for liberalism and political activism, and while there, participated in demonstrations over the Bay of Pigs invasion and HUAC while mainly studying sculpture.
After earning a BA in Art History in 1963, Pinkel worked as a researcher for the California State Legislature and did intermittent social science research, experiences that provided a foundation for later work she termed "information art." In the mid-1970s, she enrolled at University of California Los Angeles, remaining politically active, while studying with photographer Robert Heinecken. She completed studies in photography (MFA, 1977), without ever using a camera; inspired by her fascination with light and the infinite potential for form in nature, she studied non-mathematical aspects of light phenomena with physicist Don Villarejo, leading to a long period of experimentation with varied light sources and imaging techniques.Huffman, Kathy Rae. "Evolution: Video’s Analog to Digital Experiments," Evolution, Exchange and Evolution: Worldwide Video Long Beach 1974-1999, Long Beach, CA: Long Beach Museum of Art with the assistance of the Getty Foundation, 2011, p. 106.Phillips. Photographs, New York: Phillips. 2020.
Work Pinkel has moved freely across genres. Her early cameraless photography lies at the intersection of art and science, using diverse imaging technologies in abstract inquiries into the potential of form revealed by light.Lees, D. Grayson. "Beyond the Blue Emulsion: Startling Glimpses of Form, Light," Coast Magazine, April 1976, p. 19.Time Life Books, Inc. The Print, Chicago: Time Life Books, Inc., 1981. p. 210–1. Retrieved January 19, 2021. Beginning in the 1980s, she turned to highly political art, broadly influenced by conceptual artists such as Hans Haacke, Joseph Beuys and Allan Sekula; this work sometimes faced censorship.Von Blum, Paul. "Women Political Artists in Los Angeles: Eva Cockcroft, Sheila Pinkel & Beverly Naidus," Z Magazine, February 1991, p. 87-91.Heffley, Lynn. "Artwork ousted after protest," Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2005.Decamous, Gabrielle. Invisible Colors: The Arts of the Atomic Age, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2018, p. 316. In the 1990s, Pinkel also extended her scope to documentary, exploring the experiences of disenfranchised groups from Cambodian refugees to American garment workers in longitudinal, multifaceted projects detailing narratives of history, trauma, cultural loss and survival.Pelzer, Joshua. "Tongvan history retrieved by local professor," Los Angeles Times, November 28, 2003, p. A8.Lukina, Anastasia. "In Transition: Chronicle of Displacement," In Transition Cyprus 2006, Cyprus: NeMe/Lanitis Foundation, 2006, p. 12–7.
Experimental light works (1974– ) Pinkel's experimentations with light produced several extensive bodies of work dating back to her graduate studies. In her "Folded Paper" photograms (1974–82), she applied her understanding of sculpture to two-dimensional forms, exposing shaped and folded photographic paper, which after being developed and unfolded, resulted in a flat two-dimensional recording of the three-dimensional image. Los Angeles Times critic Suzanne Muchnic described them as "handsome abstractions with the gee-whiz appeal of successful illusionism and the longer-lasting satisfaction of well-composed subtleties"; Coast Magazine called them "startling glimpses into the heart of the union of form and light" combining technology and the hand of the artist. For "Manifestations of a Cube" (1974–9), Pinkel created what curator Kathy Rae Huffman called a "biography" of a small, square glass dish, capturing its essence in photograms, cyanotypes, video (the early digital film, Intuition, 1977), and other techniques.Wilson, William. "Art, A Still Life Chop Suey at Barnsdall," Los Angeles Times, September 24, 1978, p. L101. Retrieved January 20, 2021.Knoblauch, Loring. "Sheila Pinkel, Manifestations of a Cube, 1974-1979 @Higher Pictures," Collector Daily, October 31, 2017. Retrieved January 25, 2021.
Between 1978 and 1983, Pinkel worked with xeroradiography, an advanced X-ray technology normally used to detect cancerous breast tissue.Spada, Clayton. Darkroom & Digital, California: John Wayne Airport Arts Program. 2001, p. 36-37. She became fascinated with the internal complexities and delicacy of nature revealed by the technology, which made visible hidden dimensions in natural and human-made things. For works such as Peas (positive/negative) (1978–82) and Cherries (1982), she placed objects (small toys, animals and artifacts) onto a charged selenium plate, exposed it, and then made positive and negative prints described as simultaneously detailed and abstract, and radiating with energy.Spiegel, Judith. "Dismantling Cultural Constructs," Artweek, March 11, 1989, p. 13.Volpe, Lisa. "Introduction," Heavenly Bodies, Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2014. In the 1980s, this work gave way to mixed-media pieces and installations integrating light phenomena, archaeoastronomy and mythical aspects of culture, to produce sculptural installations, such as her "Solar Clocks and Moon Gardens," which functioned like sundials.Shields, Kathleen. "Siteworks/Southwest," Artspace, Fall 1984, p. 66–7.Cypress College Fine Arts Gallery. Light Substance, Cypress, California: Cypress College Fine Arts Gallery, 1998, p. 61-62. During this time she also worked on black, grey and white two- and three-dimensional works entitled "Goethe Gardens," which appeared in brilliant color when viewed through a prism.Bishton, Derek, Andy Cameron and Tim Druckrey. "Sheila Pinkel," Ten•8: Digital Dialogues, Vol. 2.2, 1991, p. 109.
Pinkel's light works have been rediscovered by a new generation, with exhibitions of the "Folded Paper" and "Glass Rods" series (2015) and Manifestations of a Cube (2017) at Higher Pictures Generation in New York.Knoblauch, Loring. "Sheila Pinkel, Folded Paper, Glass Rods, 1974-1982 @Higher Pictures," Collector Daily, February 3, 2015. Retrieved January 25, 2021. Artforum described the latter show as "exceptionally rich, strange, mercurial, and vivid, pulsating with a mysterious energy." Since 2011, Pinkel has also worked on the "Lens Scans" project, scanning over 300 in museum and private collections to document the unique refractive "fingerprint" that each lens possesses.Pinkel, Sheila. "Refractive Fingerprints of Lenses: Explorations in Light Transformations," Leonardo, Spring 2018, p. 118–23. Retrieved January 29, 2021.
In 2021, with Pinkelgraphs, she introduced a new way of perceiving light and its interaction with the physical world. Through simple means—a sheet of photographic paper and a single source of light— the artist embarked on a journey of discovery in the darkroom. By crushing and folding the paper into sculptures and then exposing it to light, she unveiled mysterious images that seemed latent within the paper itself. Each session in the darkroom became an adventure, revealing the infinite potential for form hidden within nature. Pinkel's early experiments with light laid the basis for her forty-year exploration of the interplay between form, light, and physicality.
Political art (1981– )