Sandra Sawatzky
Grew up on the prairies and has lived in Alberta for over forty years. After two decades of working in the collaborative field of film, as a writer, producer and director, producing engaging narrative choreographed action films, Sawatzky started over embarking on a path as a visual artist in order to create The Black Gold Tapestry. The 69 meter long “film on cloth” took nine years to research, design and hand-embroider and tells a social history of fossil fuels that illustrates the trajectory that has lead to climate change and transition. The first exhibition of her exceptional solo work took place 2017-2018 at Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta. The Calgary Herald newspaper named Sawatzky a rising star in 2018.
Her most recent body of work The Age of Uncertainty was unveiled at The Nickle Galleries in Calgary, Alberta in February 2022. In it Sawatzky takes on human nature’s rampant appetite for novelty, power and status and the energy and resources expended to acquire these.
With with wit, satire and her embroidery needle she tells stories with her monumental embroideries to illustrate society, history, mythology - placing human lives within the context of the world of science, technology, engineering and math. Her. embroidered installations have traveled nationally and internationally. The Boston Art Review called her work a “tour de force” and Art in America wrote her work “stands apart.”
She is currently stitching away on her newest installation Back to the Garden that she calls an altarpiece to nature. Rather than examine what humans have accomplished the new work pays attention to nature nurturing. The cosmic truth that all creation is stardust. Millions year old carbon.
In November 2022, she received the Doug & Lois Mitchell Outstanding Calgary Artist Award at the Cultural Leaders Legacy Arts Awards.