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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 Reed College is a private university, private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland, Portland, Oregon, Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor style architecture ...
in 1955. She wrote ''Alexander and the Magic Mouse'' (1969). under the ''nom de plume'' Martha Sanders. It is a
children’s book Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. Modern children's literature is classified in two different ways: genre or the intended age of the reader. Children's ...
about an
Alligator An alligator is a large reptile in the Crocodilia order in the genus ''Alligator'' of the family Alligatoridae. The two Extant taxon, extant species are the American alligator (''A. mississippiensis'') and the Chinese alligator (''A. sinensis'' ...
from China who lives with an Old Lady, a Brindle London Squatting Cat, a Magical Mouse, and a
Yak The domestic yak (''Bos grunniens''), also known as the Tartary ox, grunting ox or hairy cattle, is a species of long-haired domesticated cattle found throughout the Himalayan region of the Indian subcontinent, the Tibetan Plateau, Kachin St ...
. Although Sanders was a working artist, the French illustrator
Philippe Fix Philippe Fix (born 1 May 1937) is a French illustrator and author of children's books. He studied Decorative Arts in Strasbourg at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs and Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Career Born in Grendelbruch Grendelbruch ( or ...
was responsible for the pictures. According to one reviewer in 1970, it "make(s) the book the success it is." The same reviewer likened the colors of Fix's illustrations to "yesteryear's
tintype A tintype, also known as a melainotype or ferrotype, is a photograph made by creating a direct positive on a thin sheet of metal coated with a dark lacquer or enamel and used as the support for the photographic emulsion. Tintypes enjoyed their w ...
s," which "set the
Victorian Victorian or Victorians may refer to: 19th century * Victorian era, British history during Queen Victoria's 19th-century reign ** Victorian architecture ** Victorian house ** Victorian decorative arts ** Victorian fashion ** Victorian literature ...
scene and show Alexander to best advantage." Sanders created her own illustrations for ''Branwell Snit'', a comic strip that appeared between 1975 and 1977 in ''Wisdoms Child'', a
pennysaver A pennysaver (or free ads paper, Friday Ad or shopper) is a free community periodical available in North America (typically weekly or monthly publications) that advertises items for sale. Frequently pennysavers are actually called ''The Pennysav ...
in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
. The comic strip similarly featured a cast of talking animal characters: Branwell F. Snit, a cogitating prodigy feline named after
Branwell Brontë Patrick Branwell Brontë (, commonly ; 26 June 1817 – 24 September 1848) was an English painter and writer. He was the only son of the Brontë family, and brother of the writers Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. Brontë was rigorously tutored at ...
and based on Sanders's actual cat of the same name; Monroe, an undifferentiated bird; and Kenneth, a shaggy dog. In 2016, Sanders published her entire ''Branwell Snit'' comic strip series in ''The Branwell Snitbook: The Complete Branwell Snit Cat Comix''.


Poetry

Throughout her adult life, Sanders wrote poetry, which eventually "approached the Wordsworthian ideal of natural and yet heightened language." In 1975, one of her poems was included in an anthology of works by contemporary female poets. 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. Most of the poems were written while she was living in New York City in the 1960s.


Paintings and wall constructions

In 1973, Morgan Sanders was a founding member of SOHO20, the second all-women
cooperative A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-contro ...
art gallery in New York City. For her initial exhibition at SOHO20 in early 1974, she showed three-dimensional wall constructions that combined painting and found objects. 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 In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. The term was coined by Daniel Oliver in 1840 in ''First L ...
, with rapid, exhilarating changes of venue." 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 The Upper West Side (UWS) is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by Central Park on the east, the Hudson River on the west, West 59th Street to the south, and West 110th Street to the north. The Upper West ...
of
Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the List of co ...
, including Tiemann Place. 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. A large
nocturnal Nocturnality is an ethology, animal behavior characterized by being active during the night and sleeping during the day. The common adjective is "nocturnal", versus diurnality, diurnal meaning the opposite. Nocturnal creatures generally have ...
view of her apartment was similarly "disjointed," as if "the canvas was painted in sections," according to a reviewer in the ''New York Times''.


Photography

Sanders increasingly turned to
photography Photography is the visual art, art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It i ...
in the late 1970s and began to create photographic series, such as ''Harlem Walls'' and ''Trucks''. She showed ''Harlem Walls'' at the
New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress) ...
. ''Trucks'' was exhibited at
The Camera Club of New York Since 1884, The Camera Club of New York has been a forum to explore photography. Though the Club was created by well-to-do 'gentlemen' photography enthusiasts seeking a refuge from the mass popularization of the medium in the 1880s, it accepted i ...
in 1980, and at the Viking Union Gallery in
Bellingham, Washington Bellingham ( ) is the most populous city in, and county seat of Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington. It lies south of the U.S.–Canada border in between two major cities of the Pacific Northwest: Vancouver, British Columbia (lo ...
shortly after Sanders moved there in 1982. The next year, she showed a photographic series called ''Flowers and Stones'' at
Fairhaven College Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies is an interdisciplinary liberal arts college at Western Washington University. Instead of completing the general education requirements at Western, students take interdisciplinary classes at Fairhaven ...
. Shot with a
telephoto lens A telephoto lens, in photography and cinematography, is a specific type of a long-focus lens in which the physical length of the lens is shorter than the focal length. This is achieved by incorporating a special lens group known as a ''telephoto ...
, 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. By the end of the 1980s, she was photographing the countryside in
Whatcom County, Washington Whatcom County is a county located in the northwestern corner of the U.S. state of Washington, bordered by the Canadian Lower Mainland (the Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley Regional Districts of British Columbia) to the north, Okanogan ...
.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sanders, Morgan 1934 births 2021 deaths American women painters American feminist artists People from Salt Lake City 20th-century American photographers 20th-century American painters 20th-century American women photographers 21st-century American women photographers 21st-century American photographers 20th-century women painters