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At The Beverly Hills General Store, we spend a lot of time looking for needles in haystacks. There’s a lot of stuff out there, and our job is to find those items that truly stand out: the perfect cashmere sweater, a glorious gift, a “just can’t resist it at that price” handbag. When we came across the sculptural artwork of Sandra Mackintosh, it was though we’d found the whole box of needles!
Sandra’s work is at once elegant and simple, beautiful and humorous, modern and vintage. Many of her pieces are made from “found objects” and vintage Americana. Others are larger, fluid wooden totemic forms that reflect her longing for a rich and powerful connection with spirit. “Purity and essence of form is my whole life”, she says.
Through the ’80s and ’90s, her work was exhibited at Cordier & Ekstrom, a prominent New York City art gallery. Pieces were also placed in the Guggenheim, The Brooklyn Museum, the Newark Museum, and the Hood Museum at Dartmouth.
“My sources are vast,” she reveals. “Whatever I deem beautiful becomes a part of what I collected. And interestingly, I have always been able to attract strange and wonderful artifacts in numbers — perhaps because my passion for them was so great. These amazing things just find their way to me — somehow knowing they will be blessed, cared for and shared.”
Her house eventually became a jumble of hand-wrought iron hooks, vintage tin cups, carved wooden hearts, hand-turned wooden rolling pins, and other discoveries common and magical that arose from her love of and respect for the imagination and ingenuity of our forebears. Overwhelmed, she sought a way to bring them to life.
“That was the beginning of my path,” she explains, “as a kind of curator, antique and art dealer.” After acquiring gallery-like East Market Street, she began assembling her treasures into one-of-a-kind collections, often utilizing museum mounts to elevate their components into importance, transforming the invisible into the visible.
Mackintosh is not inclined to sell anything to anyone who isn’t as passionate about a collection as she is. “My clients, who come from all over the country, are those rare souls who find grace and beauty in ‘useless, wonderful’ things!”
If you’re interested in learning more about Sandra Mackintosh’s work please visit East Market Street Antiques.
