Sandi Wickersham, Who is she anyway?
BIOGRAPHY...then & now
The Artist:
Sandi Wickersham was born the youngest of 6
children in rural Washington state. From an early
age Sandi showed a strong interest in art & design & was encouraged to pursue her dreams.
Building upon her happy memories of growing up in a large warm family surrounded by animals of all types...domestic & farm, Wickersham paints her cheerful Americana scenes honoring those things she found precious to her childhood. Also honored in every painting is her childhood labrador retriever "Coalie" who joined her on her many adventures, long horseback rides, swimming at "the lagoon" at the Columbia River, camping & hiking with her family. Coalie is often seen in her paintings, playing alongside a blonde pigtailed young girl, Sandi's representation of herself found in her painted works.
Although art was always a part of the young Sandi Wickersham it wasn't until she turned 25 that she seriously started painting again. At that time she had already graduated from dental hygiene school & had a few years of that profession under her belt, moving from Washington to Los Angeles, where she was the hygienist to the stars, but that's another story.
Living in Palos Verdes, California, Wickersham created an art studio out of her detached garage, which was adjacent to her small horse corral. So, typically, her day was spent painting a few hours, petting the horses, painting some more, taking the horses out for a trail ride, then painting some more. This diligence in studio time allowed her to compile a good inventory of original art to approach a gallery. Since Carmel, California, seemed to be the heart of the art community for California, the artist ventured off to find a gallery where she wanted to form an affiliation. The first gallery was Galerie de Tours, who had four locations, two in Carmel, one in Pebble Beach & one in San Francisco. Her fanciful folk art paintings were taken in & began selling immediately. Shortly afterward, the gallery asked Wickersham if she wanted to participate in a folk art show at their San Francisco gallery. This was a show with very few artists, but all were folk artists, & they were from around the world. The only two American artists represented were Forrest Moses, grandson to the famous Grandma Moses, & Sandi Wickersham. All of Sandi's paintings sold out on opening night & the pattern was set for Wickersham's illustrious art career. She was affiliated with the same gallery for over 10 years, selling hundreds of paintings & building her name in the art world. When her art showed up in a national campaign for Sears & her friends said they were getting "junk mail" with her art on the cover, it was pretty clear that she was a bonified successful artist.
Other galleries came along, from Naples, Florida, to New York City & Wickersham's art was showing up in many areas, gracing numerous book covers, calendars, magazines, collector plates & dozens of published works in the form of fine art prints, lithographs & giclees.
While exhibiting at an Antique & Art Show in NYC sponsored by The Museum of American Folk Art, Wickersham made several introductions that would become long term relationships for her & greatly influence her career choices. One was the Museum itself, who asked Sandi to create folk art paintings for their museum shop, another was from Hedgerow House, a large publishing company, who was known for printing antique paintings for the museum, & had decided to branch out to publish some contemporary folk artists, Sandi Wickersham was one of their first artists they produced fine art prints & marketed internationally. Another chance introduction at that same show was meeting a representative from Random House, looking to find artists to produce calendars. They produced four years of Sandi Wickersham Folk Art calendars. Their book division printed blank journals featuring the work of Wickersham. While meeting at the publishing house in NYC Sandi was rubbing shoulders with Mary Emmerling & Martha Stewart, also producing books for Random House.
Over the 20 years of professional painting, Ms. Wickersham's art has been seen on collector plates, a children's book, dinnerware, furniture pieces, book covers, & magazine covers, as well as many feature articles in design publications.
She is collected worldwide & her works hang in the Senate building of Sen. John Warner's office (Wickersham painted a commission piece for the senator) and on actor Robert Duvall's Virginia farmhouse walls.
Sandi Wickersham now lives in Maui, where she continues to paint in her home studio. She has produced a number of tropical themed folk art paintings influenced by her tropical surroundings. Many of her original tropical paintings are produced into limited edition canvas giclees.
Her gallery affiliation is currently Center Art Gallery in Carmel, California.
THE DESIGNER:
While living in Virginia, Sandi Wickersham created several retail stores, beginning with Wickersham, An American Country Store, in historic Middleburg, Virginia. This store was a home decor store with American antiques & folk art. It's doors were graced by many of the local "celebrities", from Jackie Onassis, to Barbara Walters, Robert Duvall, Sen. John Warner, Tommy Smothers, to name a few. It launched a second location in the sleek Reston Town Center, a trendy high rise shopping center out of Washington, DC. The store there, called WICKERSHAM, expanded it's merchandise to clothing, jewelry, & a more city chic than it's country counterpart.
After a few years of full time retail, Wickersham took some time off to rest & recuperate, painting full time once again. She moved to an historic cottage, an old toll house on the National Register of Historic Homes, & took about a year to make it into her own little showcase.
Around two years later, Wickersham was offered an opportunity to lease a beautiful building in the village of Purcellville, Virginia. This old Quaker community was the first place Sandi had lived when moving to Virginia from California & she was familiar with the building, an old three story Georgian Colonial house, with a large porch, columns, & lots of room to fill with a retail store. The landlord had seen the Middleburg & Reston stores & asked her if she could do the same sort of thing in his building, so a new business was born, this one called Twigs. The sleepy town of Purcellville was in a growth spurt & it wasn't long before more & more businesses moved there. With this growth, Twigs grew & became a destination for day trippers driving out from Washington, DC. Country fairs, farmer's markets, antique shops & cozy eateries all contributed to a fun day in the country & Twigs was on the lips of those in the know. Through this location, Sandi Wickersham, was "discovered" by publishing companies who liked her style & asked to photograph her store & home for their magazines & books. This lead to her acting as a "scout" to find other properties to photograph, then being brought in as a "stylist", the person who was sent to the photo shoot site to organize & set up the photo shoots prior to the photography team & editor coming in from New York. As one thing lead to another, Sandi began styling photo shoots, & freelance writing their articles. Everytime they were shooting locally, the photo team would shoot more photos of the store & her home, so to this day, when a magazine is opened you may still see some of those photos in a variety of design magazines.
While Sandi was more known as an artist in Virginia, the publicity she received through Twigs lead to many more opportunities & notoriety in the interior design field. She participated in a Designer Showhouse with another designer & their room took first place in the competition. She was awarded top businesswoman for Western Loudoun County & was featured on the cover of Loudoun Magazine. She began staging homes on the market for her store clients, but didn't continue with the staging until much later, after moving to Maui.
Sandi Wickersham is the owner of Wickersham Design, a company which offers interior design & vacant home staging services. Recently she has moved her business from home based to a warehouse in the Kihei Commercial Center where she has opened an eclectic beach style home decor store called Nest.
Nest is open Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays from 10-6. Wickersham's vision for Nest is to create an exciting "breath of fresh air" kind of store that will delight customers when they walk through the doors. Delighting with an ever changing inventory & delighting in fresh new ideas customers can take home. Innovative, different, chic & hip, Nest will not disappoint!
Sandi Wickesham is busy with multiple interior design projects presently & continues assisting marketing real estate properties through vacant staging. She is embarking on a multi-unit condo project soon & will be designing their model units as well as furnishing their units sold with interior design packages. Most of her work is in the Wailea area, but reaches from Makena to Kapalua, even the Big Island.
THE LATEST PAINTING: "New Snow fall in Pine Valley"
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, 24 x 36
Close-up detail of Pine Valley Antiques, chock-full of goodies
Close-up detail: Sandi, the artist, & Coalie feeding the horses by the campfire. Stone buildings & log cabins are nostalgic memories of her life in Virginia
"Croquettes & Croquet at Egret Bay"
"Pink Flalmingoes & Sunburned Gringoes"
"Hawaiian Quilt Show"
"Palm Reading done here"
"Wiki Wiki Fruit Stand"
"Fourth of July at Peppermint Point"
"Meet you at Mango's"
"The Day of the Quilt Show"
"Beauty and The Beach"
