Sandra Alexis Withers was born to John and Mary Withers, a couple who met during World War II in the North Pacific. John had served in the Navy, and when he got a bit of shrapnel in his gut from a kamikaze, he was put in the infirmary where Mary served. The two fell in love quickly, and had an Irish Catholic wedding after the war in Albany, New York. John opened a car dealership of his own in Albany, selling cars made by the people he killed in the war. He made a great deal of money as families sprang up and needed cars. Mary, however, was not doing as well. She was failing her duty as a wife, to produce children. After 9 years of marriage, Mary gave birth to Sandra in the fall of 1954.
Sandra suffered from low birth weight and was not expected to survive past the age of three. Nonetheless, her parents loved her a great deal. After so many years of trying, they had succeeded in bringing a little person of their own into the world.
When, at the age of five, they declared Sandra a fully healthy child capable of living a full, productive life, her parents were overjoyed. They immediately began enriching her life. They first started with piano lessons... followed by dance. Each year after, a new medium or branch of expression was added. At six, it was violin. At seven, it was ballet. Eight, painting. Nine, poetry. Ten, sculpting. Eleven, nude figure drawing. At twelve, the lessons came to an abrupt halt.
Sandra was hospitalized for guilt/anxiety disorder, a product of the unrealistic demands of her parents coupled with their constant absence. In the mental ward, changes took place in Sandra. She was not allowed to draw and perform while she was there, two factors that only contributed to her depression. She tried feebly to take her life by strangling herself with a blanket. When she was allowed to pursue creative things, they were twisted reflections of her childhood works. Instead of faeries, she drew small creatures with ragged, immobile wings. Instead of her parents, she drew pictures of the "unpresentable" children forgotten within the mental ward. In the two months Sandra was at the mental ward, her outlook and style had changed dramitically. Everything was filled with cruel irony, all the images were accusatory, and her subjects, although always beautiful in themselves, were always crippled or somehow defeated.
Sandra spent the remaining years of adolescence at numerous different schools of the arts, many of which forbade her from displaying her most inspired works. In 1971, at the age of 19, Sandra went to a prestigious art school in Manhattan. Here she joined the counterculture of the time- hippies, anarchists, satanists, revolutionaries, and geniuses. Sandra exhibited elements of all of these, but still she was the quiet girl considered strange and perhaps dangerous. She didn't fit in and spent more time with professors than with the other students.
After two years of school, Sandra became fed up with academia and mediocrity. She had large asperations... and few means. Her goal was to move to Paris and join the revolutionary performance art group, Fluxus. After a year of working nights as a waitress, she had acquired enough money to get to Paris, as well as an amphetimine addiction. In Paris, Sandra stopped eating altogther. Half out of a need for self mastery, half out not caring, Sandra became a full blown anorexic. She lived out of a small hotel, working small acting jobs with small parts for enough money to find speed and maybe even bread.
Perhaps it was just her natural talent and good looks, maybe it was fate, and maybe it was on unseen hand of the undead, but Sandra landed a major part, that of Lucky in the play "Waiting for Godot." Although this is a male role, the director was making a revisionary version of the play, and was trying, by using a female for the enslaved character, to convey a sense of sadomasochism. Sandra, always being on the fringe of masochistic tendencies, readily accepted the role. Several notable critics and local artists saw her in her role, and as the production continued, more and more people filed in just to see Sandra.
Suddenly people were interested in her art. She was being groomed as "The Next Big Thing" for the eighties. Her art shows were attended by very famous rock stars of the moment- John Lennon, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, and Yoko Ono, who Sandra still refers to as one of her close personal friends. There was lots of talk about her extremely controversial performances. One unifying element of her work was blood. As trite as it seems today, she used blood to make a lot of statements regarding the revolution, women's rights, animal rights, and the human condition. Sometimes she used a razor blade and incorporated her own blood. Other times, it was from animals prepared ahead of time in bowls.
Once she went on tour, her manager continued to push her towards further scandal. The second that Sandra would fall behind on what was considered shocking, the public lost interest. So she employed more and more blood into her acts. Her final major performance was in Paris where she used what would eventually become her signature act: she put a deceased cow on a meathook suspended from the ceiling, removed her shirt so that her body would be covered in the blood, and proceeded to use a chainsaw on hack the cow to bloody peices in some parody of a Dionysian orgy.
Her efforts did not go unnnoticed. Someone in that night's crowd was not human, and her had great, perfectly symmetrical plans for Sandra.
On December 4th, 1980, Sandra was killed. She walked out the back door of her hotel so as not to be seen by paparzzi. The whole trip was just supposed to be across the street to the cafe where she would meet her contact and aquire another three days worth of speed. Duelius Labyrinthium Enigmaticus Jack leapt from the shadows, and Embraced Sandra in that rain-drenched Parisian alley.