Blakeney Sanford (b. 1979) is a multimedia sculptor, photographer and conceptual artist whose work, rendered almost entirely in blue, explores the boundary between natural and man-made environments.Raised on a ranch in California's Santa Rita Hills, she studied studio art and mathematics before earning a BFA in Human Ecology, and is otherwise self-taught.,
Sanford did not commit to art as a career until around age 28, after a burst appendix while teaching sailing in Baja for the National Outdoor Leadership School led to severe peritonitis and a year of hospital treatment in Santa Barbara.In a hospital bed she resolved to pursue art, and over the following decade made large-scale installations with oceanic themes, including 7.85 (2009), a 35-foot epoxy resin and fiberglass installation in Santa Barbara.,
During the COVID-19 pandemic, while living on a ranch north of Santa Barbara with her husband, filmmaker Bennett Williams, Sanford was working with three-and-a-half-foot blue panels of epoxy bio-resin and fiberglass she had made for an installation at GoPro's headquarters. Coming upon a field of wild spring mustard one day, she brought one of the panels into the field and photographed it there, a moment that became the first work in The Portals.Begun in 2020, the ongoing series sites an iconic, translucent blue rectilinear sculpture in landscapes around the world, each installation documented through photography, videography, a Polaroid she calls a “proof of moment”, and 3D sculpture, with digital video released on the blockchain.
In May 2023 she installed a Portal in Albemarle County, Virginia, recording it in the Polaroid The Portals: Proof of Moment - Virginia Woods and the video The Portals: Kinesis - Virginia Woods.,The series has traveled to sites across the United States, Mexico, Egypt and the United Kingdom, and was shown at the “COP27 World Art Forum” in Sharm El-Sheikh in 2022.,In 2024 a Portal installation was included in the “Fresh Air Biennial Sculpture Exhibition” in the Cotswolds, England, and in “UNHRD x Transient Labs” at the Oculus in New York.Jeremy Tessmer, director of the Sullivan Goss Gallery in Santa Barbara, where Sanford has shown her work, has described her recurring blue as “a genius color”.
