Sandra Hansen is an international, Environmental artist, optimist, and world traveler. She is the founder and CEO of Artists’ Cultural Exchange, a non-profit organization to bring artists of different nationalities together. Her travels have taken her to thirty countries around the world to create art, meet artists, visit art galleries and museums, participate in artist residencies, and to lead workshops. Hansen’s art embraces the beauty of water; often making commentary on our treatment of mother earth. Her primary medium is paper making, but she enjoys drawing with colored pencils and oil pastels as well. Hansen’s art papers are often 82 h x 34 w inches and are often embedded with beach pollution, found objects or decorated with paint or ink. This year she began making journals using her own art on the covers and handmade papers inside.
Sandra has had a unique career path. She wrote her own Women’s studies major at Hope College and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1991. After a brief stint in politics and a bid for state representative in 1992, Sandra began her own business, Women’s History ALIVE! For almost eighteen years she traveled across the country performing her original one woman plays on famous women in history. When that ended in 2004 due to cuts in arts spending Sandra took up painting. Having been to India in 1983 and 1992 she returned to India in 2005 for a series of art trips. She has now been to India thirteen times to teach, lead workshops, and participate in artist residencies. In 2010 Sandra returned to college life and enrolled at Kendall College of Art and Design, receiving the Portfolio Prize in 2010 and the Excellence in Painting Award in 2013. She went on to receive her masters in painting in 2016 and received the Portfolio Prize during her masters years as well. During her final year at Kendall College Sandra took a paper making class and much to her painting professors’ horror became addicted to paper.
The year 2017 has been a banner year for Sandra with a lot of traveling. In the spring Sandra did some drawing with colored pencils and oil pastels in Sweden and Denmark, selling paintings in both places. She took a week vacation in Estonia before going to Japan where she toured the Obara Papermaking Museum. From there her travels took her to China where she met with artists, visited museums, and toured the Xuan/Rice Paper Making museum. The highlight of China was an exhibition with Leilei Chen, Beibei Chen, and Yiwang Wang (details about this exhibit are below).
After a two and a half month visit home Sandra headed off to Jaipur for the Jaipur Kala Chaupal which ended with an exhibition at Rajasthan’s premier art center, the Jarwahal Kala Kendra (JKK). Forty artists attended and created art together. Each artist was assigned an apprentice to work with. Many of the artists were linked to studios and workshops around the city. Sandra and two other artists had the opportunity to work at the Kagzi Industries paper making factory. Sandra created some dolphin shaped cotton paper for her installation for the exhibition. Kagzi Industries is a small family owned factory that is completely environmentally sound. The cotton paper is made from the scraps of T-shirts made at a T-shirt manufacturer. The water is re-used over and over again. All chemicals used in the paper making is ecologically safe as well. Three generations of the family work in Kagzi Industries.
The residency was located at the Diggi Palace Hotel which has been renovated yet it keeps the old charm of the Indian nobility. Each room was unique with painted nooks and crannies, columns. Sandra had a lovely porch with comfortable chairs to sit on. The artists ate at the hotel restaurant which had delicious Indian buffets for every meal. The sweets were especially wonderful.
In the fall of 2018 Sandra will host an artist residency in a lovely rural setting near Lake Michigan. Four international artists will be invited to participate. Called Artists Cultural Exchange, artists will meet American artists, do workshops, and be taken on trips to Detroit and Chicago to see their galleries and museums. It is hoped that the artists will be able to be involved in Grand Rapids’ ArtPrize as well.
She lives in Holland, Michigan in the US with her husband and two cats.
Website www.sandrahansen.com
Facebook: Journals@artnomadjournals
Artists Cultural Exchange a non profit. That will host an artist residency for international artists in September https://www.artistsculturalexchange.com/
Right now Sandra has a few pieces at Raymond James on 8th St in Holland
For the month of March she has a show at Great Legs Winery. 332 East Lakewood Boulevard
Holland MI 49424
Paper Gyre
Handmade paper, paint, found objects
82 x 39
$1200
Red River Vallley
Handmade paper, paint, found objects
82 x 39
$1200
Sandra is very active in the world. Below is information of how she spent a few weeks this past summer.
Leilei Chen, Beibei Chen, Wang, Yiwang, and Sandra had an opening at the Inner Mongolia Art Museum in Hohhot, China. They wined and dined for two weeks and took tours of Inner Mongolia.
They saw dancers, musicians, and ate huge feasts daily. The first picture is of her giving a speech on the opening day, July 7, 2017. There were three galleries, one for her, one for the Chinese Chen twins, and one for Wang, Yiwang. Sandra’s gallery is the second picture. The third picture is of Paper Wave which is in the museum’s permanent collection.
Now, here is the press release from the Inner Mongolia Art Museum exhibit:
Three West Michigan residents and one Chinese artist participated in a Chinese-American, Environmental art exhibition at the Inner Mongolia Art Museum in Hohhot, China, July 7-16th. Since so many people in Inner Mongolia live close to the land, with farming, and grazing in desert and mountainous regions care of the earth is very important to them. The exhibit focused on water and air pollution; and biological extinction.
The Mongolian culture is unique from the rest of China with their own dialect, script and customs. The artists were able to participate in the Mongolian customs of music, dance, and toasting events. These events were sponsored by Fujian Normal University in Fujian, China; the Inner Mongolian Art Museum of Hohhot, China; and Artists Cultural Exchange of Holland, Michigan.The four artists in the exhibition were twins, Beibei and Leilei Chen, originally from Liaoning, and,Beijing, China, but presently residing in Grand Rapids, Michigan; Sandra Hansen, from Holland, Michigan; and Yiwang Wang of Fujian, China. Although highly trained in art, these artists take very different approaches to pollution in their art practices.
The Chen twins’ art is completely intertwined as both artists work together and separately on all pieces of their art. Hansen is not only an artist, but also an activist, and public speaker. Wang, an associate art professor at Fujian Normal University specializes in landscape paintings in China. These artists are connected through Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, where Hansen and the Chen’s were graduate students and Wang participated in a one year artist residency.
Hansen’s large handmade papers focuses on water pollution in various forms such as surface pollution, algae bloom, and chemicals in the water. Hansen mixes water themes with embedded plastics and organic materials together. Her papers are influenced by historical Asian art. International Chinese artist Songxian Ling wrote of Hansen’s art as a “near-perfect combination of materials and topics, a sense of rhythm, which has drifted away from the Oriental mystical composition and holds contemporary manifestations of a deep level. Hansen’s art reflects her rich cultural connotations, and is very moving.”During Wang’s artist residency in Grand Rapids, MI she learned that the bees are facing widespread, massive extinction. Without bees, there can be no pollination of plants. Without pollination humans will not be able to survive on the planet. She has used her impressionist painting style to emphasize the dire consequences of bee extinction from pesticides. Wang’s landscape art does not include any human forms, only plants. Empty bee hives on dead trees are an indication of the damage that is being done by the use of pesticides.
The Chens focus on air pollution in many forms. To illustrate the ravages of air pollution in the human body they use traditional Chinese free hand painting, negative space, and elements of Asian style painting in their art. The two artists take laboratory slides depicting microscopic lung cancer tissues and cells to show how change occurs internally in the human body while undetected on the skin’s surface.
The Inner Mongolia Art Museum’s concept in this exhibition is to firmly establish a public respect for the environment as well as to work with the natural world, rather than against it. Public art shows such as this bring awareness to the value of the natural world. This exhibition represents a commitment by the museum to examine environmental issues in future art shows.
