Morgan Sanders

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For the American politician, see Morgan G. Sanders.
Morgan Sanders
Born1934
Salt Lake City, Utah
DiedApril 27, 2021(2021-04-27) (aged 86–87)
NationalityAmerican
EducationReed College
Known forChildren's literature, painting, photography
Notable work
Alexander and the Magic Mouse (1969)

Morgan Sanders (1934 - April 27, 2021), also known as Martha Sanders, was an American painter, photographer, poet, and author of the children's book Alexander and the Magic Mouse.

Children's book and comic strips[]

Sanders earned a B.A. in Literature at Reed College in 1955.[1] Under the nom de plume Martha Sanders, she wrote Alexander and the Magic Mouse (1969),[2] a children’s book about an Alligator from China who lives with an Old Lady, a Brindle London Squatting Cat, a Magical Mouse, and a Yak.[3] Although Sanders was a working artist, the French illustrator Philippe Fix was responsible for the pictures, which, according to one reviewer in 1970, "make the book the success it is."[3] The same reviewer likened the colors of Fix's illustrations to "yesteryear's tintypes," which "set the Victorian scene and show Alexander to best advantage."[3] Sanders created her own illustrations for Branwell Snit, a comic strip that appeared between 1975 and 1977 in Wisdoms Child, a pennysaver in New York City.[2] The comic strip similarly featured a cast of talking animal characters: Branwell F. Snit, a cogitating prodigy feline named after Branwell Brontë and based on Sanders's actual cat of the same name; Monroe, an undifferentiated bird; and Kenneth, a shaggy dog.[2] In 2016, Sanders published her entire Branwell Snit comic strip series in The Branwell Snitbook: The Complete Branwell Snit Cat Comix.[2]

Poetry[]

Throughout her adult life, Sanders wrote poetry, which eventually "approached the Wordsworthian ideal of natural and yet heightened language."[4] In 1975, one of her poems was included in an anthology of works by contemporary female poets.[5] Sanders published a collection of her poems and a selection of her drawings in Looking for Lola: Poems & Drawings by Morgan Sanders, which was released in 2018.[4]

Paintings and wall constructions[]

In 1973, Morgan Sanders was a founding member of SOHO20, the second all-women cooperative art gallery in New York City.[6][7][8][9] For her initial exhibition at SOHO20 in early 1974, she showed three-dimensional wall constructions that combined painting and found objects.[10] In his review, the art critic Peter Frank described the "progressions of dissimilar elements" as "episodic" and praised their suggestion of "a stream-of-consciousness narrative, with rapid, exhilarating changes of venue."[11] At SOHO20 in 1975, Sanders exhibited four sets of photographs and three large paintings that depicted the aging interiors of turn-of-the-twentieth-century architecture on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, including Tiemann Place.[12][13] The paintings, which showed the "marble of a lobby, metal work of a bannister, floor tiles, and masonry details," were segmented in a collage-like manner.[13] A large nocturnal view of her apartment was similarly "disjointed," as if "the canvas was painted in sections," according to a reviewer in the New York Times.[14]

Photography[]

Sanders increasingly turned to photography in the late 1970s and began to create photographic series, such as Harlem Walls and Trucks.[15] She showed Harlem Walls at the New York Public Library.[16] Trucks was exhibited at The Camera Club of New York in 1980,[15] and at the Viking Union Gallery in Bellingham, Washington shortly after Sanders moved there in 1982.[16] The next year, she showed a photographic series called Flowers and Stones at Fairhaven College.[17] Shot with a telephoto lens, the works were meant to be seen from a distance of 20 to 25 feet, which made the flowers "become the dipping and sweeping figures of dancers in flowing gauze gowns," in the words of one reviewer.[17] By the end of the 1980s, she was photographing the countryside in Whatcom County, Washington.[18]

References[]

  1. ^ "Reediana Briefs". Reed Magazine. March 2017. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Sanders, Morgan (2016). The Branwell Snitbook: The Complete Branwell Snit Cat Comix. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 9781534773943.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b c O'Connell, Margaret F. (8 February 1970). "For Young Readers". New York Times.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b Sanders, Morgan (2018). Looking for Lola: Poems and Drawings by Morgan Sanders. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 978-1719229401.
  5. ^ Iverson, Lucille; Ruby, Kathryn, eds. (1975). We Become New: Poems by Contemporary American Women. New York: Bantam Books. p. 170.
  6. ^ Lubell, Ellen (Summer 1977). "SoHo 20". Womanart. 1 (1): 16.
  7. ^ Broude, Norma; Garrard, Mary D., eds. (1994). The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
  8. ^ Bergantini Grillo, Jean (Summer 1976). "Soho 20: A Diverse Women's Gallery". The Feminist Art Journal. 5 (2): 36–37.
  9. ^ "SOHO20 Gallery: Organization History". SOHO20 Gallery. Retrieved 24 February 2014.
  10. ^ "Art". New York Magazine: 26. 18 February 1974. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  11. ^ Frank, Peter (14 February 1974). "On Art". SoHo Weekly News.
  12. ^ "Art". New York Magazine: 24. 3 March 1975. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  13. ^ Jump up to: a b Lubell, Ellen (May 1975). "Arts Reviews: Morgan Sanders". Arts Magazine. 49 (9): 13–14.
  14. ^ Raynor, Vivien (30 December 1977). "Art: Representation Is Alive in SoHo". New York Times.
  15. ^ Jump up to: a b "Piston-Packin' Mama". New York Magazine: 67. 18 February 1980.
  16. ^ Jump up to: a b "Love Those Big Mother Trucks". Bellingham Herald. 17 September 1982.
  17. ^ Jump up to: a b Harris, John (7 October 1983). "Photographer Takes Long Look at Flowers and Rocks". Bellingham Herald.
  18. ^ "Behind the Shutter: Morgan Sanders". Taste: Bellingham's Magazine for Fine Living. 2 (2): 24–25. August 1989.
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