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Sandow Birk
Sandow Birk (American, b. 1962)
Northern California Women's Facility, Stockton, CA, 2001
Oil and acrylic on canvas
Gift of Berkus Family Collection
Birk created a series of 33 paintings of prisons in California. He uses a romantic, nineteenth-century style that draws the viewer into a Bierstadt-like, grandiose American landscape tradition, only to shake our senses when we realize the subject is a prison. The dreams and promises of the American West are transformed by the reality that California has more prisons than any state in the U.S.
Hear from Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum's Director,
Judy Larson talk about Birk's work!
