Who We Are
Sannerud Studios is a husband and wife team—Jim and Mary Sannerud—who work with metal, wood, and fiber, creating sculpture, furniture, turned bowls, and textiles for the home. They share a studio near Grand Marais, Minnesota, that has expansive and inspirational views of Lake Superior.
Living the life of an artist is not as useful as living our lives as a work of art.
-Martin Prechtel
About Mary
Mary Sannerud is a multi-media felt artist, educator, and facilitator with an interest in the arts as a spark for community building. She is the recipient of an Artist Initiative Grant from the MN State Arts Board and has taught workshops and facilitated group felt-making projects around the country. She came to this work by great surprise, having never used her hands to create beauty. She was taught traditional felt rug making in the U.S. by a family of felt-makers from Kyrgyzstan, then lived and worked with her mentors in Kyrgyzstan for 3 months. This time of learning deeply rooted her work and began her education in the cultural significance of felt throughout the world. She currently maintains her business, Sannerud Studios, in collaboration with her husband in Grand Marais, MN and lives by the fierce belief that beauty in all things matters.
When I stop to look and wonder at a small rock on the beaches near my home in Grand Marais, I begin to notice the colors, patterns, textures, intrusions, what’s being revealed, what hints at more below the surface. I imagine how we came to be together in this moment, and it gives my heart joy. I am participating in this wild layering of time- old and new all mashed together, and yet so much unknown between us.
My work stems directly from this rocky earth where I stand, but also from where I come from.
I include weaving samples made by my grandmother, silks I print with rusted tools my great uncle made while working as a blacksmith. Male and female forces together creating life, both with the power to take it away. When I give myself over to the beauty of these foundational forces a well spring emerges, and a great sigh of relief. I remember that I am not in charge, my job is to participate, ask questions, listen, and make beauty.
About Jim
My work resides at the intersection of culture and soul, preserving tangible and intangible cultural knowledge while also providing an outlet of personal expression in utilitarian objects. My past body of work focused primarily on wood and woodturning, in particular making bowls. The bowl is the microcosm for a gathering of people, the form that frames food, and within my studio the curved canvas for carving and painting. For many years I have made bowls and contemplated how the forms could emerge from an inherited knowledge of woodworking from my Norwegian ancestors.
Recently, I expanded into furniture as a way to engage the entire body of the viewer rather than just the hands with the bowl. I studied with American Windsor and Scandinavian master chair makers and learned the process of making a chair using all hand tools. I am now adopting the principles of this study into a more modern form, applying modern day equipment to make the chair more efficiently. Like the bowl, the chair has also become an object for carving and painting.
As I continue making furniture, I hear a calling to activate the pieces with the human form. Just as the chair becomes the cradle to house the body of the viewer, I am embarking on large scale metal and mixed media installation work to create objects where people engage from a distance, as well as come closer, and move in, on, around, touch and listen to fully experience the work.