Sandra Schoen was born in Madison, Wisconsin and attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before receiving her art degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1996. This prestigious degree allowed Sandra many opportunities, such as waitressing. In 2012 she went back to school for a teaching certificate, and has been teaching in the McFarland school district ever since. Sandra started with kindergarteners but found her calling working with middle school students. Teaching is the other half Sandra’s my artistic identity. Sandra’s work in the classroom inspires her own work, and her work fuels her teaching. 

Over the years, Sandra has worked in a variety of media, including drawing, assemblage, structural book binding and watercolor. She has always resisted painting but recently has been trying to work on canvas. Sandra’s 2019 exhibition More Pictures of Buildings and Trees shows some of her recent efforts in acrylics, as well as the more familiar mediums of watercolor and pen-and-ink drawings. It also explores the visual themes of architecture and nature, themes which have been prevalent in her recent work. Houses invoke a consideration of the memory and history of the buildings themselves as well as their inhabitants. Sandra often puts these buildings in mysterious and unstable environments. She tries to balance this unease with images of trees and natural motifs, giving a view of both the disorientation of internal memory and the harmony and magic of the world around us.