Sandra Hansen, MFA
ARTNOMAD
Sandra Hansen created an undersea world with pure, sustainable handmade paper and repurposed plastic bags. Paper and plastics are the natural and the unnatural, the life giver and the life destroyer, the dichotomy of life and death. Often the two are mixed like microscopic plastic in our drinking water. Hansen’s art is about life or death and our love of plastic.
As the environmental crisis grows larger so does Hansen’s art. Her new installation is an undersea universe with paper sea creatures wearing ropes and fishing nets like scarves and capes casually draped around their shoulders. Her largest piece is a life-sized humpback paper whale that hangs from the ceiling. Fishing nets made from plastic bags cascade from the ceiling and walls. A paper dolphin and a paper sea turtle glide through the underwater world. Translucent plastic bags are repurposed into jelly fish.
The world resonates with plastics and can no longer imagine life without them. Every sea, lake and water mass has a gyre of plastics, according to Marcus Eriksen, co-founder of 5 Gyres. “The gyres we study account for about 25 percent of the planet’s surface, and they draw pollution from all over the world... It would be a waste of time and money to try to clean up all the plastic in the gyres, identifying and reducing that pollution at its sources upstream is the only way to reduce it.” Plastics are in the drinking water, placentas, and babies. We are almost unable to buy clothes and vegetables without plastics. The health care system uses plastics for medicines, IV tubing, syringes, sterilized packaging, and many other things. Houses are encased in plastic vinyl siding. Our transportation is full of plastic in the seating, bumpers, and dashboards. This is the exquisite pollution that we love.
Journals
This is a sample of the hundreds of handmade journals that I have made. Many of them have original art on the covers using a large variety of mediums from oil paint, to oil pastels, handmade papers, wallpaper samples, found objects, colored pencils as well as many others. The text blocks are made in India from 100% cotton scraps from T-shirt factories in India. The journals come in three sizes, 10x7 inches, 7x5 inches, and 5x4 inches. Journals can be commissioned for a particular person or subjects. Workshops can be arranged with four or more people from ages 8 years old to senior citizens and all ages between. Workshops are fun for Birthday parties, Women's Night Out, and any other group.
After taking a papermaking class at Kendall College of Art and Design in 2015, I fell in love with papermaking. Last October I was invited to an artist residency in India where I had the opportunity to work for a few days at the Kagzi Industries, a family owned, ecologically sustainable papermaking factory. Kagzi Industries makes paper from cotton scraps from T-shirt factories into paper. They do not use dangerous chemicals and they recycle their water over and over again. Their paper was made into sheets, journals, stars, and many other items. I decided to buy some text blocks and put my own handmade paper and drawings on the covers.
Each journal is completely unique. I use drawings, cropped paintings, handmade papers, fabric, and other papers on the hardback journals and sketch pads. The papers and fabrics are glued over backing board that I cut to size. The covers then get a variety of added details such as bookmark ribbons, closures, and feathers. The text blocks are then glued in with ecologically sound and archival wheat paste glue, or PH glues. Not only are the journals unique but they use recycled, upcycled, and repurposed materials. They are beautiful to behold, beautiful to hold, write, draw, paint, or put photo graphs in. They hold inspiration and hope in their spines.