By Bella Watson
Staff Writer
Costa alumnus William Sandell does has his dream job as a career, as he his an artist who portrays his work to the public.
Sandell has been making art ever since he was child, when he had a love and joy for art and drawing, not only did he like art, he said. He also enjoyed inventing goofy gadgets and such in his free time. When he was fifteen, he built skateboards using his grandfather’s workshop.
Photos: Click here to see photos of Sandell’s Art
“I really wanted to be an inventor when I grew up. I did not know of what, but I knew I wanted to be one,” said William Sandell. “Like most of parents, mine would have been horrified if I’d told them that.”
Sandell built his first moving assemblage sculpture when he was nineteen and during a college course at Pierce Junior College. After that, he moved to Los Angeles to Brewery Artist Lofts, to pursue his love for arts. Sandell says, he struggled with selling enough of his sculptures in order to pay for rent.
“I love sitting down and looking at this huge pile of junk I have, and waiting for a concept to pop into my head.” said William Sandell. “The pieces start talking, and if you listen carefully, it all falls into place.”
Sandell participates in an Art Walk twice a year and is able to get thousands of people visit his art studio. Martin Benz from the Manhattan Beach Art Center stopped by his studio and found one of his squeaking inventions. Betz found it interesting and decided to put it together with Cyda Valle’s, an oil artist and Sandell’s neighbor, oil paintings for a show.
Link:Check out this link to learn more about William Sandell
“I was very curious to see the reactions to my sculptures in the Manhattan Beach show.” said Sandell.”Manhattan is an interesting and discerning art community there, so I was wondering what the reception would be to our work.”
Over the years, Sandell hasn’t shown much of his artwork, although some of his work has been shown at a show in South Pasadena at SugarMynt in 2016. He says a lot of people find his work interesting, but some people disagree with it and call his work silly.
Link:Click here if you want to learn more about Sandell’s Kinetic Narrative Art
“I’ve really never met anyone that hated my work.” said Sandell. “Young people, old people, nice people, cranky people, they all seem to get a kick out of my creaking clanking boxes.
As a child, Sandell was constantly surrounded by his aunt who was a painter as well as an art teacher which was a huge inspiration on why he loved art. His parents were not really into the arts, so that is why he looked up to his aunt. Sandell’s main artistic constant in his life were his teachers from grammar school all the way through college. To him, his teachers were very interesting and all of them seemed to inspire him a different way.
“When I was a kid, I loved the Rube Goldberg cartoons in the Sunday funny papers. He designed elaborate contraptions that did stupid things the very hardest way possible,” said Sandell.”I didn’t know established artists were doing assemblage art until I was older.
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