We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jeanne C. Sanders. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jeanne C. below.

Hi Jeanne C., thanks for joining us today. Has your work ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized?

The image of “starving artist’ has been so ingrained in our culture as to be overlooked and accepted as a norm. That needs to stop. Professional artists are a valuable asset to the aesthetics of our society and the Arts need to be an important part of the education of our young people in lower school through high school. Creativity of all kinds needs to be nurtured. Seeds lie dormant until they are coaxed into bloom.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Antique Mirrors, and the soft reflective beauty they provide, have fascinated me for over 25 years. My Dallas Design District studio is where I hand-finish mirrored glass for interior designers and clients from all over the country. My work is in some of the finest estates, hotels and homes as well as framed on walls and in showrooms in Design Centers around the US. I treat Mirror as my canvas, just as any artist would treat a stretched piece of linen, that is where I begin. I work from the back side when I’m antiquing, so I’m working in reverse of what will be seen. It’s a process that’s taken many years and lots of practice to develop. Every piece is unique, organic and suited to the environment where it will be seen. And, due to its reflective nature, it never quite looks the same since when a person looks in the mirror they become a part of the art itself.

For more contemporary clients I have developed a fresh new process called, Color Infused Mirror. This is an opportunity to work with translucent colors and abstract patterns as they develop on the surface of the mirror. Seeing through a brilliant blue or green patterned mirror gives a whole new perspective to MirrorArt!

YKAJE is yet another offshoot of my artistic experimentation in glass, Acrylic which is sculptural, hand colored and heat-formed, it most closely resembles the hot/warm glass that intrigued me many years ago. There’s a lovely story about how it came about and the significance of the name. I may come back to that….

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

As a female, in a very male dominated glass and mirror business, it took years to explain that, (as a guy once said), I wasn’t….”ruining a perfectly good piece of mirror’! They mostly came around, but not without some grudging attitude adjustment. The greatest help towards gaining their respect was when they saw the looks on the client’s faces when my mirror art work was installed in high-value estates. We were working in the finest homes in the area and for some of the top designers and architects; that was hard to dismiss for the guys that didn’t quite understand the ART of what I was doing.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For all of the challenges, and there have been many, for me the rewards far.. outweigh them. Being creative means growth! Every project is different and presents me with new challenges and opportunities as well as a wonderful community of people. There is no stagnation in the world of art. I’ve had vendors go out of business just as I was bidding a job. Sometimes the weather affects the outcome of something in a negative way. We adapt. What all this means is that as a creative person, if we are to survive, we learn something new, we figure it out, we know someone who knows something about what we need to know, or with today’s tools we use Google or YouTube. But really, those things weren’t available when I started this journey, so it was the community of fellow artisans that I relied upon for help and guidance. And they are who have remained the most rewarding aspect of my creative life.

Contact Info:

• Website: mirrorartdesign.com
• Instagram: mirrorart2 YKAJE
• Facebook: Jeanne Sanders
• Linkedin: J

Image Credits
Due to some technical difficulties, images are being sent via email to Mark Clark at [email protected]