Sheila Pinkel

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. She first gained notice for cameraless photography begun in the 1970s that used light-sensitive emulsions and technologies to explore form; 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. Writers identify an attempt to reveal the unseen—in nature and in culture—as a common thread in her work.

Sheila Pinkel, Grand Glory (Light Works), Luminous gelatin silver paper, 48" x 96", 1978–82. Collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

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. She has exhibited internationally and her work belongs to public collections including those of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Centre Pompidou, Hammer Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Photography. Afterimage and Heresies, and taught at Pomona College in Claremont, California. She lives and works In Los Angeles. 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.

Sheila Pinkel, Crush (from "Thermonuclear Gardens"), Black-and-white photocopy produced on gelatin silver paper, 12" x 36", 1985.

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. 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.

Experimental light works (1974– ) Pinkel's experimentations with light produced several extensive bodies of work dating back to her graduate studies.

Between 1978 and 1983, Pinkel worked with xeroradiography, an advanced X-ray technology normally used to detect cancerous breast tissue. 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.

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.

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– ) In the mid-1980s, Pinkel began moving back and forth between her light works and engaged political art, sometimes combining them. Thermonuclear Gardens (1981–1991) was a series of twelve installations—its title a pun on military "plants"—that investigated the growth of the U.S. military-industrial complex and nuclear industry and its negative impact on the environment, health, jobs sectors and geo-political regions; it combined in-depth, footnoted research, text, light works, and photocopied and crumpled images (of fighter planes, hands and faces). Thermonuclear Gardens #5 (University of Southern California Atelier Gallery, 1985) focused on American arms sales, combining a central map indicating international weapon transaction locations, explanatory text, and take-out food containers housing dead plants above and below the map, which listed arms dealers. Site/Unseen: Incarceration (2005), a multi-panel history of incarceration that included images of slavery, child labor and the Japanese internment, stirred controversy and was removed from a commemorative parole museum exhibition.

Recognition and collections Pinkel has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2004), Mellon Foundation (1998), Sloan Foundation (1987, 1988, 1990) and National Endowment for the Arts (1982, 1979), among others, as well as a Hammer Award from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (1996). Hammer Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum of Contemporary Photography, among others.

Other professional activities Pinkel has worked as a writer, curator and teacher. A long-time contributor to Leonardo, Heresies, and Obscura, among others. She has also written and produced several books, including Kou Chang’s Story (1993, with Kou Chang), Refocus: Multicultural Focus (2011), and Weavers of Varanasi (2015), as well as several catalogues of her work and curated exhibitions. She has curated exhibitions at the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery ("Multicultural Focus," 1981), LACE, and the Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies ("Missing: El Salvador", 1991), among other venues. Pinkel served on the art faculty at Pomona College (1986–2011), teaching courses including documentary photography, experimental photography, history of photography and computer graphics before retiring as Emerita Professor of Art in 2012.