Blue Cross ArtPrize Artists Inspired by Nature and History
Lindsay Knake
| 4 min read
Lisa Sanderson hasn’t ever considered herself to be an artist, but she’ll have to rethink that as this year her work will be on display at ArtPrize.
You can see her 5-foot by 5-foot woven wall hanging in a large window at the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan office at the Steketee’s Building, 86 Monroe Center St. NW, in downtown Grand Rapids. ArtPrize is Sept. 13-Sept. 28.
“You can enjoy the hanging from a distance and up close,” she said. “When you see it up close, you see so much more. The more you look, the more difference you see in the sections… I’m hoping it’s something unique you don’t see all the time.”
Sanderson has a business degree but has always liked to work with her hands. Through the years, she’s done macrame, crochet and some knitting, among other types of art. Several years ago, she became interested in weaving and got a small tabletop loom. Sanderson made towels and scarves no more than 20 inches wide. Her adventures in weaving took her to yarn stores and festivals where she fell in love with the textures, colors and feel of the various yarns and natural fibers.
At her home in Cadillac, she had a two-story wall that needed a large piece of art. She came across woven wall hangings and decided to make something. Sanderson built her own 6-foot by 6-foot loom for the project and collected many different types of yarn and fiber to spin into the yarn she wanted.
“I love working with natural fibers. I’ve gotten away from anything synthetic as much as possible. There is so much color in natural colors. I tend toward natural, earthy colors,” she said.
The wall hanging took about a year to make, and Sanderson received many compliments on it. In May, her sister encouraged her to make another and enter ArtPrize. Sanderson wasn’t sure at first, she but decided to go for it. She’s been working almost nonstop all summer on her next piece to get it done in time. With yarn and fiber strewn across her living room, she’s created the woven hanging with fiber from sheep, goat, alpaca, cotton and even a ragdoll cat.
Sanderson doesn’t have a vision or a pattern for her pieces, but rather creates by feel. She will unspin and re-spin yarn to create what she wants or take out parts of her hanging to redo it.
“I let the yarn tell me what it wants to do,” she said.
Hope through History
Carrie Draper of Hesperia has been crocheting for most of her life, an art form she learned from her great-grandmother. This year, she has two crocheted tapestries on display at the Blue Cross building in Grand Rapids. Like Sanderson, it’s her first ArtPrize.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 while many people were discovering new hobbies, Draper learned tapestry crocheting, a form of crocheting where people use photographs to create blankets and wall hangings. Her first project was a tapestry of her father as a young man riding his favorite dirt bike.
“You could see the details so well,” she said. “All those old gearheads were complimenting me on my crocheted Afghan. They could tell what the bike was.”
From there, Draper looked to the American West, where she used to live. She started creating tapestries of Indigenous Americans who inspired Draper with the history they saw in their lifetimes. Draper’s tapestries at ArtPrize are based on photos of Pretty Nose, an Arapaho woman, and one of Red Cloud, an Oglala Lakota chief.
Her two pieces in ArtPrize took six to eight months to make and each has between 38,000 and 46,000 stitches. To craft them, Draper runs a picture into a computer program to get a pattern, which she creates one stitch at a time into her sepia-toned tapestries.
She said showing her work at ArtPrize gives her the opportunity to share a message of hope.
“We’re all humans. We’re all made in the image of God. We all deserve respect and to be treated with dignity,” Draper said.
Blue Cross has hosted art in its Grand Rapids building since 2011. Each year, multiple artists are on display in the building’s front windows. Art pieces at the Blue Cross building are chosen to showcase diversity and health, fitness and education.
Images: Courtesy Lisa Sanderson and Carrie Draper
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