PORT TOWNSEND — Artist Sandy Diamond’s life will be celebrated with the sale of several hundred pieces of her work this weekend.
“We are not trying to make money,” said Dianne Diamond, her sister.
“We are just trying to get her work out there.”
Proceeds will be placed in trust to send her granddaughter Skyler, now 5, to college, Dianne Diamond said.
Sandy Diamond died Feb. 9 at the age of 79 due to complications after a fall.
The art sale will be from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the artist’s home at 703 U St.
It will feature calligraphy prints and originals, drawings, collages, poetry books, CDs, cards, antiques and one-of-a-kind frames.
The art was stored out of view in the home Sandy Diamond occupied for 16 years.
“I knew this was here but never saw it all put together,” Dianne Diamond said. “It’s overwhelming.”
Her sister grew up in Gates Mills, Ohio; studied literature at Brandeis University; and earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University’s College of Painting and Sculpture as a painting fellow.
Artist, poet, musician
She was a talented artist, poet and musician who suffered from manic depression well before it was rebranded as being “bipolar,” suffering the indignities of an ailment that few people then understood, her sister said.
“My parents did everything they could to make sure that no one knew that Sandy was ever in a mental institution,” Dianne Diamond said.
In a 2010 Peninsula Daily News profile, Sandy Diamond was up-front about two elements that have shaped her both mentally and physically: mental illness, for which she was hospitalized three times, and a physical deformity that left her with the self-penned nickname “The Hunchback.”
“One way of looking at living with a hunchback is to say, ‘Oh, poor me,’ but I look at it as everyone knows me — and I’m special,” she said then.
When Sandy Diamond was 35, she decided she wanted a child but was not mentally stable enough to be in a relationship, she told the PDN in 2010, adding that instead, she became a “deliberate single parent,” giving birth to her son, Gabriel, in 1972.
Sandy Diamond was born with scoliosis — curvature of the spine — but it wasn’t understood that she had the ailment until she was 27 when she fell off a roof and broke her back.
The accident shortened her height from just over 5 feet to 4 feet, 7 inches.
While cataloguing her sister’s possessions, Dianne Diamond noticed that all of the furniture accommodated the diminutive height and then discovered a drawer full of sawed-off furniture legs that had made it so.
Sandy Diamond began as a painter, but arthritis in her hands caused her to turn to calligraphy as her major form of expression.
In this respect, she continued to be unique, her sister said.
Created her own category
“She created her own category, fusing the written word with art and collage,” Dianne Diamond said.
“Most calligraphers concentrate on the letters. Sandy used the whole palette of her artwork.”
A majority of the sale items are quotes in calligraphy on quality paper, ranging from sources as diverse as Herman Melville, W. Somerset Maugham and Bette Midler.
Sandy Diamond turned to poetry in the ’90s. Her books, Miss Coffin and Mrs. Blood — Poems of Art and Madness and The Hunchback, will be available at the sale.
She moved to Port Townsend in 1999 after a writing residency at Centrum introduced her to the area.
After her retirement in marketing, Dianne Diamond, now 73, moved to Port Townsend to be close to her older sister.
Sandy Diamond wrote several plays, seven of which were performed during Key City Public Theatre’s Playwrights’ Festival.
She also performed as the frontwoman of Quasimodo & The Bellringers, backed by an instrumental trio and performing a combination of blues, jazz, poetry and humor.
“If you listen to Quasimodo & The Bellringers, you’ll really understand who Sandy was,” her sister said.
Several copies of the group’s CDs will be available, along with an abundance of her calligraphy, many of them priced at $1.
“When Sandy lived in the Bay Area, she sold several copies of her work,” her sister said.
“After she moved to Oregon and then to Washington, she printed the same amount but didn’t sell as many copies.”
Five weeks after her sister’s death, the shock has subsided, but Dianne Diamond still breaks into spontaneous tears.
“It is very hard to be here in this house, which Sandy infused with so much love, kindness, gentleness, art and humor,” she said.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
