SaraShiva Spitzer

speed limit

I feel a responsibility as an artist to create dialog around the pressing issues of social, environmental, economic, and racial justice that we face as individuals, communities, and a planet. I am a firm believer that everything is connected – that we are a reflection of our world. As the planet heats and the water rises I look for meaning in the world around me. My work becomes a network of places, and I look for ways of layering, connecting, and concentrating thought with imagery. Through this layering, I hope to create a fundamental connectedness in my work, giving rise to the possibility of seeing every object, system, and person a little more clearly. "Speed limit" speaks directly to what we have, what still remains, and what we are quickly losing. Time is accelerating, rapidly shrinking our collective survival on this beautiful planet.

Sara Shiva Spitzer is an arts educator and visual artist specializing in photography and mixed media collage. Over the past twenty years, she has worked with diverse populations in rural and urban settings throughout the Midwest. Through curating exhibits of artwork by survivors of domestic violence, incarcerated women, and "at-risk" teens; Sara Shiva has increasingly built her capacity as an activist-advocate for arts that draw attention to issues of social and economic injustice. Her current projects consider race and poverty in urban landscapes. Her work has appeared in TRANSverse Journal and in an image-text collaboration with poet D. M. Spitzer is in production for the e-chapbook series of the Hawai'i Review.