artist, filmmaker
19th century naturalist Leclerc de Buffon declared “Style is the man himself.” And he hadn't even met Sandow Birk. A modern man in whom style and self-expression have merged into a whole; with whom the message is clear and constant and only the medium changes. There is the painting: his latest work Depravities of War, a series of huge, 32-square foot wood block cuts utilizing 17th and 19th century influences to depict the American experience in Iraq. There is the film work: Dantes Inferno, based on his acclaimed, Gustave Dore-inspired vision of a post-apocalyptic war between San Francisco and Los Angeles. There are the books: the companion-piece Dante's Inferno, his modern re-telling of the classic decent into hell theme, and The September Project, musings on a recent surfing trip to Ireland. The writing: His Tide and Tide column in Waves magazine. And then there is the kinetic art, the purely unconscious form of expression that occurs every time he paddles out, turns for a wave, strokes, jumps to his feet and simply lets all that style sing for those precious seconds he rides.
www.sandowbirk.com