Sandra Sawatzky grew up on the Canadian Prairies in Alberta, where she spent two decades in the film industry before pivoting to a career as a visual artist. The switch came after an embroidery exhibition in Calgary, Alberta, inspired Sandra to start a tapestry of her own. Seeing the opportunity to create an “epic film on cloth,” she decided to tell the social history of the oil industry and its impact on climate change today. The result, a colossal 67-meter work titled “The Black Gold Tapestry,” took Sandra nine years to research, design, and hand-embroider before it was exhibited at the Glenbow Museum in 2017.
