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For anyone who’s ever entertained the idea of joining the circus, Redwood City artist and educator Terry Sand has a message for you: “It’s never too late to run away.” Her goal is to bring the freedom and playfulness inherent in improv comedy to all she does, and to help others feed their creative spirits too. No matter your background or stage in life, “you can run away and join the circus metaphorically,” she said, escaping the anxiety and/or drudgery of everyday woes.
“The Shinsplintski Family Circus” exhibition, offering a peek into Sand’s whimsical world, opens at Art Bias in San Carlos on June 7. During the open-studios event, visitors can catch three mini performances from Sand and members of her long-running improv class, including a musical number.
“We come blasting in with hula hoops and do this little crazy modern dance circus opening,” Sand said of the group’s act, which also includes demonstrating improv games to help show the connections between the creative process of improv and other types of art. There will also be an activity for kids, and animal crackers for everyone.
“It’s just going to be a lot of music and actors and fun costumes and ‘insecurity’ guards,” she said, inviting attendees to “use your imagination to travel off to the silliest circus on Earth.”
The accompanying art exhibition includes Sand’s circus-themed art in a variety of media, including paintings and sculpture. In addition to the opening presentation, the visual-art exhibition will run through June 29.
“Her current work draws inspiration from Alexander Calder, responding playfully to his iconic Calder’s Circus,” according to a press release from Art Bias, where Sand is one of the resident artists. “Echoing Calder’s imaginative use of small-scale figures and kinetic storytelling, Terry reinterprets the circus as both object and performance — imbuing everyday materials with personality, humor, and a touch of absurdity.”
Art Bias opens its studios to the public every first Sunday of the month and Sand emphasized that her June 7 festivities are meant to celebrate the organization as a whole and the other resident artists as well, with special gratitude to Art Bias’ executive director Terra Fuller, whom she said has supported and inspired her. The event will also include pop-up sales from Mason and Mason Handmade and Kitchen Table Travel, according to Art Bias’ website.
For Sand, improv and visual art naturally go hand in hand. One of the lessons of improv she carries with her into all her artwork is, “‘yes, and.’ Saying yes to your own ideas, to tell your ‘committee’ to go on sabbatical and just say, ‘yes.’ Your first idea is the right idea,” she said. “When I start to paint something, what I do is I just start throwing paint on the canvas, and to me that’s like asking the audience for a suggestion. You have to trust yourself and you have to trust your process. I don’t have to know what it is before I see it — same with improv, you don’t know what your scene is going to be, you start building it with the other actors.”
Sand has led a life full of art, improv and saying “yes” to opportunities that have come her way (as well as creating her own). After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in modern dance from UCLA, she got “sick of the whole Hollywood/L.A. scene,” moved up to the Bay Area and never looked back.
In San Francisco, she worked with San Francisco Dance Theater and the San Francisco Arts Commission, was crowned the first winner of the “Miss Haight-Ashbury” contest in 1982 (“I did the whole thing in roller skates,” she noted), co-founded all-female improv troupe FEMPROV and was a TV host with KPIX. She’s also been a motivational speaker, leading comedy-centric team building and improv workshops, and an activity director for seniors (she’s also worked with kids and folks of all ages). And she’s loved creating art for as long as she can remember.
“I just like to play. I’ve always taught improv and I’ve always done art all along, even as a dancer,” Sand said. “I take my improv concepts and my modern dance sensibilities and put it on canvas and sculpture. It’s now kind of fusing together.”
She moved from San Francisco down to Redwood City in 1993 and has been teaching improv through the city’s parks and recreation department for many years, as well as occasionally teaching at Art Bias.
Donne Davis, who took her first improv class from a Stanford professor back in 1981, said she, like Sand, loves the open-minded “yes, and” philosophy of improv and applying it to life in general. She’s been taking Sand’s improv class for the past year and said she looks forward to performing at the Art Bias event — hula hoop and all.
“We don’t get that many opportunities to play and be silly as we get older, but in improv we do. I always say I get a great ab workout from laughing so hard in our improv classes,” she told this news organization in an email. “Terry is a fabulous teacher and gives us so many opportunities to use our creativity in ways we never could’ve imagined.”
Sand’s next Redwood City sessions will start up in August and while she usually teaches on Saturday afternoons at Red Morton Community Center, she plans to add a Tuesday evening class for those not available on weekends. She also plans to expand to teaching at Redwood City’s brand-new Veterans Memorial Building and Senior Center as well and has big dreams for the space. Sand has her eye on that as the perfect venue for a full-length musical production of “The Shinsplintski Family Circus” in the future. “Redwood City’s going to become the theatrical improv extravaganza of the world,” she said with a laugh. “That stage, it has the Shinsplintski Family Circus written all over it.”
“The Shinsplintski Family Circus,” performances take place June 7 at 1:30, 2:30 and 3:30 p.m. as part of Art Bias’ open studios noon-4 p.m.; 1700 Industrial Road, San Carlos; free; artbias.org. More information on Terry Sand is available at terrysand.com.
