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.
International, Environmental, Mixed Media Artist
Timeline
The Blue Mountains Botanic Garden in Mt Tomah, Australia is tasked with heavily guarding and propagating the Wollemi pine trees.
After some research, I was pretty certain that I could make paper from the Wollemi pine's leaves. I applied for, and was granted, 2 kilograms of leaves. I was able to make these leaves into paper. I became the first person in the history of the universe to make paper from the Wollemi pine tree.
The "Timeline" reaches into history with some Wollemi pine leaf paper, to our modern day, with its plastics. The rivers and waters of the world all have chemical and material pollution. The "Timeline" records the history of pollution in the water.
At the Bilpin International Ground for Creative Initiatives (BigCi), an artist residency in Bilpin Australia, I had plenty of space to create large art. Timeline was created from handmade paper, blue jeans, found objects and Wollemi (Woe' le my) Pine paper.
The Wollemi pine tree was known of only through fossils. It was thought to have become extinct 93 million years ago. In 1996 David Noble was rappelling in the Wollemi National Forest when he found some unusual trees. These were discovered to be Wollemi pine trees.
Handmade Paper, Wollemi pine paper, blue jean paper, found plastic tarp, and other found objects.
120 x 96 in