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.
A soft blanket of sweet green algae covers the glittering blue lake. Silver white fish lie on the bier of Lake Erie, senseless of life. Agricultural and Industrial waste creates our exquisite pollution.
Algae Bloom won Honorable Mention at the Holland Area Arts Council all Michigan Regional Art Show 2014.
Oil and Acrylic on Masonite
96 x 48 x 4 in
Algae Bloom