teri.backstory
photo: elizabeth brown eagle
“Teri Gandy-Richardson's
constructions are at once meditation and physical embodiment of the breath. A teacher and practitioner of yoga, her complexity of simplicity is grounding and revelatory.”
—Aisha Tandiwe Bell, artist + curator
Teri Gandy-Richardson identifies as an abstract painter, yet, her process is to dissect, twist, tie, mold and adhere worn Levi’s denim scraps. Using acrylic paint to push the depth and dimension of her gestured, and sculptured surfaces, Teri’s work weaves history and cultural weight into her abstract compositions.
After 3-semesters studying Architecture at the Cooper Union, Teri Gandy-Richardson transferred to the Cooper Union School of Art where she earned her BFA in Painting. Many years later, while working as a graphic designer, she began to stretch the boundaries of her art practice by combining breath work with gestural drawing exercises for her Creative Arts Therapies thesis, (at The New School, NYC). This unexpectedly inspired a career as a professional yoga teacher (650-RYT), then serendipitously stepping in to take over an existing studio business to run as her own. In 2016, diagnosed with breast cancer, Gandy-Richardson became certified between surgeries with yoga4cancer to teach oncology yoga to other survivors. Teri’s class was featured on Good Morning America, when former client, Robin Roberts expressed her own benefit from the practice. As the final owner of Park Slope Yoga Center, (Brooklyn) founded in 1999— Teri Gandy-Richardson continues to lead group and private sessions primarily for Brooklyn’s yoga community privately, in studios and a monthly class at Maimonides Cancer Center for cancer survivors, treated there.
As part of the current faculty at Playwrights Horizons Theater School, (Tisch/NYU), Teri Gandy-Richardson teaches Yoga + Somatics. There, she uses yogic systems and creative thinking as a practical and accessible foundation for grounding her students in practices for facing life’s challenges. Teri has been proud to watch as students learn and develop valuable tools to support their own wellbeing while they also discover, and activate the strengths, and resources that they’ve had all along.
teri in denim Art CV, and current work+details.
