WRITER TO ARTIST

Joelle Sander always wanted to be a professional writer and accomplished just that over the course of 35 years. Published in newspapers, magazines and scholarly works, her book “Before Their Time: Four Generations of Teenage Mothers” won Best Adult Book About Children (1991-1992) from the Anti-Defamation League's Braun Center for Holocaust Studies. For 20 years (1989-2009),  she served as associate director of The Center for Continuing Education at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, where she taught “Modern American Poetry” and “Reading and Writing the Essay.”  She continues to teach in the Writing Institute at the college, from which she graduated in 1963.

Along the way, however,  Sander has discovered another artistic talent – one for painting. Her second solo exhibit, “Color as Refuge,” at the college’s Esther Rauschenbush Library through March 9,  spotlights her oil paintings of the natural world. Drawn to large forms and patterns, Sander paints the semblance of sky, water and woods and abstracts images of petals, leaves, branches, flowers and birds. Sander uses a wide variety of tools in her paintings -- brushes, palette knives, rags, sponges and the sides of cardboard pieces she loads with paint and jabs against her canvas.  As a result, her textures range from translucence to heavy impasto.
The library is on Glen Washington Road, off Kimball Avenue in Yonkers. Information: 395-2470