Harriet Ann Schooley Sanderson passed peacefully surrounded by her family in Seattle on February 15, 2017 at the age of 70 from pancreatic cancer.
Harriet was born on January 26, 1947 in Lebanon, Indiana, and grew up in Indianapolis. Having survived polio as a child, early on she showed her indomitable spirit, keen intellect and abundant creativity. She began making art at an early age, played French horn in the school orchestra and, as a budding entomologist, competed regularly in 4-H where she met her high school sweetheart and future husband, Jim Sanderson. During years of childhood field outings, often accompanied by her father Harry Schooley, she assembled an award-winning insect collection; and after graduating from Southport High School she went on to earn a BS in Entomology while Jim earned degrees in Chemistry and Biochemistry, both from Purdue University.
Harriet and Jim were married in 1969, and in the following year their daughter Anna Kelley was born. After graduating, they moved back to Indianapolis to pursue their careers, lovingly raise their daughter, cultivate their shared love of gardening and become vital members of the Circle Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Harriet honed her prodigious printmaking skills at the Indianapolis Art League where she sometimes worked at the large etching and lithography presses alongside her mother, Alice Schooley. At the same time, during the 1970s and 1980s, Harriet also practiced silkscreening, drawing, painting, ceramics and became the chief designer at Fox Stained Glass Studio. After moving with her family to Seattle in 1985, she earned a BFA in Printmaking in 1988 and an MFA in Printmaking in 1990, both from the University of Washington. Among her professors who were significant mentors, and who were to become her esteemed colleagues, were Shirley Scheier and Michael Spafford.
Harriet was a nationally recognized artist, lecturer and collaborator, thoughtful teacher and generous mentor. In 2008, she and Jim traveled to New York City where she received the Wynn Newhouse Award for artists of excellence who happen to have disabilities. In 2011, The University of Washington College of Arts & Sciences presented Harriet with a Timeless Award, honoring 150 distinguished living alumni for their contributions and accomplishments. Harriet’s art has shown nationally and internationally and continues to make an indelible mark. Her work is included in private and museum collections and taught in fine art college curricula around the country.
In the prolific 26 years following her MFA, she produced a tremendous amount of potent work across disciplines, all of which centered on the universal experience of embodied existence. Her interior, bodily, approach to artmaking gave rise to a fierce and powerfully visceral conceptual art that Dr. Ann M Fox characterizes as, “sometimes exuberant, sometimes somber, always nuanced.” Harriet’s permanent installation at Harborview Medical Center, WALKING WALL, is a gently undulating wainscot of 700 walking canes, and a reminder that our daily rhythms continue despite changes according to age and ability. She loved classical music and dance, and frequently attended concerts with her husband Jim. Her musicality and sensitivity to gesture and movement were expressed in much of her work. As Dr. Ann M Fox writes, “Sanderson’s work celebrates the movement of the extraordinary body, enhancing the feminist deconstruction of the bodily ideal.” In LAG, Harriet’s 5000 square foot installation for the former Sand Point Naval Air Station, she delicately balanced canes and chairs upon one another without fasteners, playfully and poetically alluding to the physically and psychologically destabilizing nature of illness and disability. Her wry humor was always present, in her video performances of balancing acts and in sculptural prints of “acrobats” and other figures who lithely performed in unique bodies. Harriet drew an exquisite line, beginning with childhood doodling on bedclothes and her own skin during periods of illness. In many of her prints and drawings she revisited early recuperative games of connect-the-dots, saying, “Being imperfect is no fun, but a propensity for play can make it more tolerable.” Drawing is present even in her installations. Michael Spafford likened her placement of objects to Paul Klee taking his lines on a walk. Harriet continued making art into 2017, believing that art made life worth living. As Elizabeth Bryant wrote for Harriet’s 25-year survey Uneasy Landscapes in 2012, “Harriet’s most recent work circles back to where the journey of life and art are one.”
Harriet and Jim created an urban oasis at their home in Seattle’s Mapleleaf neighborhood bordering on Thornton Creek and they have been instrumental in the community restoration of the Thornton Creek Natural Area. Harriet’s art studio looked out on their beautiful garden that celebrated each season with ever-changing color, texture, shape and aroma that were at once delicate and bold, just as was Harriet and her art. Over the years, she and Jim gathered a wonderfully eclectic group of friends and hosted countless dinner parties with neighbors, activists, artists, University of Washington students who rented rooms in the house and their dear friends from the Wednesday Forum discussion group.
Harriet will be dearly missed by so many. She leaves a legacy of personal and artistic tenacity, inventiveness and wry playfulness. As Shirley Scheier has written, “Her artmaking gives tribute to lives lived with enduring, courageous honesty.” No matter our metier, her eloquent work will hopefully spur us on to seek insight through creative experimentation.
Harriet Schooley Sanderson is survived by her husband of 47 years, James A. Sanderson, of Seattle, Washington; her daughter Anna Kelley Daedalus and Anna’s partner Kerry Davis, both artists of Portland, Oregon; her sister and brother-in-law Mary Jane and Ken Pennell of Towson, Maryland; and her nephew Rob Pennell and his family of Spokane, Washington.
A celebration of Harriet’s life and work will be held March 19th, from 11 am - 2:30 pm, at the Center for Urban Horticulture, University of Washington Botanical Gardens. (NHS Hall, 3501 NE 41st St, Seattle, WA 98195.) Her family invites you for lunch, music and sharing in this beautiful place dear to Harriet. Donations in her memory may be made to The Nature Conservancy at: http://bit.ly/2mmhtpw More of Harriet’s work can be seen at harrietsanderson.com .