Sam Anderson Returns!
January 13, 2026

Artist Sam Anderson returns with a new selection of music that continues our journey into the world of synthesizers that started with her first appearance in 2021.

Anderson breaks down every track, giving us an in-depth history of the instruments, contexts, and the artists who made them. She focuses especially on legendary pioneers of synth/electronic music like Suzanne Ciani, Shiho Yabuki, and Raymond Scott.

Anderson’s most recent project started when she discovered a draft of a one-act play written in the 1970s by her mother, the late actress Conchata Ferrell. Using notes and journals that she inherited as well as other resources from the time, Anderson finished the play, The Wolf Is an Endangered Species. It's about five women in a theater company working to put on a play. Themes of relationships, competition, and the difficulties for women of working in a male-dominated field are still very relevant today. In December, she produced, directed, and starred in a production of the show at 15 Orient gallery in New York City, and in the spring she plans to produce it in Los Angeles.

We discuss Anderson’s mysterious and evocative sculptural work, including her pieces E Number 1-11 and TV from her 2017 show “The Park” at Sculpture Center in New York City. TV comprised a weathervane positioned outside the museum that determined the soundtrack for the gallery below; one of eight pieces composed by Anderson and her partner would play depending on which way the wind blew. It is emblematic of Anderson's concerns with space, sound, story, and fate.

In this music-forward episode, we talk about the psychoactive properties of sound and how it can be used for better or for worse. In Anderson’s playlist, it is used for good!


Listen on Mixcloud here

1. At The Store, Ernest Hood, 2019
   
2. Footprints on the Moon, Johnny Harris, 1969
   
3. The Inspector Clouseau Theme, Henry Mancini, 1982
   
4. Thatcherie (from "Inner Space",) Sven Libaek, 2006
   
5. Ride a White Horse (Tiny Surf,) Sven Libaek, 2013
   
6. Le carnaval des animaux, R. 125: VII. Aquarium; Camille Saint-Saëns, Pascal Rogé, Cristina Ortiz, London Sinfonietta, Charles Dutoit; 1980
   
7. Baby Elephant Walk, Henry Mancini, 1962
   
8. Track Of The Cat, Pram, 2003
   
9. Tomoshibi, Shiho Yabuki, 2018
   
10. The Seventh Wave - Sailing Away, Suzanne Ciani, 1982
    
11. Pompeii 76 A.D., Gail Laughton, 2013
    
12. Deep Distance, Ashra, 1977
    
13. Sleepy Time, Raymond Scott, 1995
    
14. Tempo Block, Raymond Scott, 1995
    
15. Noonday Yellows, Ernest Hood, 2022
    

Sam Anderson is a sculptor whose work explores the fragile interplay between memory and the material world, as much through language as through form. Her rigorously arranged, often minimal compositions combine figures and objects that feel both intimately familiar and unsettlingly existential. Using materials such as clay, metal, plastic, resin, reclaimed wood, and fabric alongside everyday objects, Anderson constructs scenes that oscillate between the poetic and the uncanny, humor and pathos. Drawing from the visual language of American literature and cinema, personal history, and the slippages of linguistic play, Anderson’s work probes how meaning is constructed and deconstructed. Her sculptures inhabit the sad, often absurd space between expectation and desire, functioning like prototypes—she believes the prototype of an idea is often more sincere and open-ended than its final result. By reconfiguring interchangeable, everyday materials, she uncovers the latent narratives embedded within the mundane. Bio courtesy Derosia