Sant Khalsa (b. Sheila Roth, January 3, 1953, New York, NY) is an artist, educator and activist living in Southern California since 1975. Her artworks develop from her inquiry into the nature of place and the complex environmental and societal issues present and visible in the landscape of the American West. Her work has been shown in more than 100 solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, etc. and have been acquired by permanent museum collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Nevada Museum of Art, UCR/California Museum of Photography, and others in addition to private and corporate collections in the U.S. and Europe.

Khalsa is a recipient of prestigious fellowships, awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, the California Council for the Humanities, Arts Foundation of San Bernardino County, the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, and others. Her artworks are published in the books, Art in Action: Nature, Creativity and Our Collective Future (Natural World Museum and Earth Aware Editions, 2007), The Altered Landscape (University of Nevada Press, 1999), Fotofest H2O 04: Celebrating Water (Fotofest, 2004), Post-Landscape: Between Nature and Culture (Pomona College Museum of Art, 2001), and Water In The West: Eleven Photographers Examine the American Western Landscape (Humboldt State University, 2000) and the other publications including WaterWorks: Contemporary Quarterly (No. 4, Summer 2006), Connecticut Review (Fall 2005, Vol. XXVII, No. 2), and European Photography (No. 75, Summer 2004). Articles and critical reviews regarding her artwork can be found in Art in America, Art Ltd., Afterimage, Exposure, British Journal of Photography, LA Weekly, New Art Examiner, Coagula Art Journal, ArtScene, Los Angeles Times, Artweek, Visions Art Quarterly, PDN/Photo District News, Boston Globe, and High Performance.

Khalsa has presented nearly 50 lectures at professional conferences, art venues, and universities including The Getty Center, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Society for Photographic Education, Western Historical Society, American Photography Institute at New York University, Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Claremont Graduate University, and California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia.

Khalsa was cited in Forbes Collector’s (September 2006, Vol 4, No 8) feature article, “Hidden Gems of Photography” by Weston Naef, Curator of Photographs at the Getty Museum, as an artist worthy of collector’s attention in the current photo market, and also by art curator and critic Kim Beil in Art Ltd. (January 2007) article “Powers of Ten” as one of ten contemporary Los Angeles photographers who are “ . . . earning their place in history and giving compelling shape to the future.”

She is Chair of the Art Department and a Professor of Art (Photography and New Genres) at California State University, San Bernardino where she is one of the founding faculty of the Water Resources Institute (WRI).