DAGNE HANSON
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Portrait of an Artist as a Mother S.H.- |
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Dagne was born in Carroll, Iowa in 1931, but she didn’t stay there long. After two short months Dagne and her mother returned to Arizona, where her life as an artist would begin.
Her parents were a powerful influence on her. Willis and Doris Hanson had both graduated from the Chicago Art Institute, the first in their families to pursue lives as artists, and were wholly committed to the lifestyle. This dedication was passed on to Dagne, not aggressively, but passively. They didn’t make demands or give unwanted suggestions: they gave unconditional support and answered questions.
The Great Depression found an infant Dagne, her mother Doris, and five year old brother Chase living in a mud chinked sand stone house on the edge of the Navajo reservation near Winslow. With Willis in the VA hospital in Prescott for lead poisoning, Doris and Willis’ brother Swede took responsibility for the two small children, making money bootlegging and throwing cowboy dances. One of these dances provided Dagne with her first memory: cowboy boots and corn meal covering a dance floor. This period of her life lasted for three years.
In 1934 Swede moved to Phoenix to sell insurance door to door. Doris took Dagne and Chase to Prescott, where they would live in a boarding house while waiting for Willis to be released from the hospital. He was released in 1935. This was followed in short order by the birth of Valerie, Dagne’s sister. They stayed in Prescott for three more years, Dagne explored all that Prescott had to offer and began to draw. Her first medium was a stick in the dirt.
The family pulled up stakes in 1939 and moved to Phoenix, where Willis had gotten a job. They stayed there for three years while Dagne completed fourth through sixth grade and played with her chicken, Marguerite. In 1942 the family relocated yet again. Willis and Chase moved to Lamar, Colorado, where Willis had found work at Amache, a Japanese relocation center. Doris, Dagne, and Valerie moved back to Carroll for a short while then joined the two men in Lamar. Chase enlisted in the Navy; the rest of the family stayed in Lamar (with Willis commuting to Amache) for two years, then spent most of a year living in the relocation center themselves.
In 1945 the war ended, the camp closed, and Willis’ job was terminated. They moved to Denver, where Willis had been hired at the Veteran’s Administration, and this is where Dagne spent her high school years. High school was good for Dagne’s social life, providing her with an abundance of opportunities for activity. Some of these activities included: Prom committees, the Viking Sisters, National Honor Society, Latin Club, sailing, going to see live music, and (of course) the Art Club. She did thirty three drawings of students for her senior year yearbook, graduated second in her class, and earned an academic scholarship to the University of Colorado at Boulder.
After attending college for one year with the intention of finishing there and then following in her parents foot steps by going to the Chicago Art Institute Dagne returned to Denver. Times were hard for the Hanson family. Dagne decided that it would be best for her to return to Denver and lend them her support. She spent one year in Denver, working at Time Inc. and taking life drawing classes at night. Willis decided that the family should return to Phoenix, where perhaps their fortunes would improve. They sold their well loved house in Denver and bought a house on 39th Street in Phoenix. Willis and Doris would spend the rest of their lives living in Phoenix in that very same house.
Dagne went to work for her uncle Swede at Charter Oak Insurance. Willis and Doris continued to suffer through hard times. Eventually Spike Maryott, a close friend of the family, offered them the formula for treating chalk turquoise and the tumblers to treat it in. Neither Willis nor Doris had the money to pay him, so Dagne paid him with the money she had been saving to go to the Chicago Art Institute. She didn’t tell her parents, though. She let them believe that Swede had contributed the funds. Processing turquoise led Dagne’s parents to a successful jewelry design and production business.
Although Dagne could no longer afford to attend the Chicago Art Institute, as per her dreams, she could afford the Kachina School of Art, in Phoenix. She attended the Kachina School until 1953, when she graduated. While in attendance she also met Clare Yares, her first husband. Dagne and Clare were married soon after graduation. They would have four sons together: Greg in 1954, Jonathan in 1957, Evan in 1958, and Michael in 1960. Dagne and Clare would divorce in 1961, but the stage was set for the rest of her life as an artist and mother.
Soon after graduating from school she began to show her work publicly, and as time passed she began to show more and more throughout the city of Phoenix. She also had shows in Denver and was represented in the International Women Painters Invitational in Paris, France in 1962. Dagne managed to support herself and her four boys exclusively through the revenue supplied through her art work. Having children dictated the hours in which she was able to work: she was only able to paint during nap time or after bedtime. Nonetheless, she was prolific. Her work could be seen throughout the country.
In 1964 her boys temporarily moved in with their father. Dagne took the opportunity to travel, with trips to LA and New York. She went to New York to visit George Hopkins, whom she had met in 1963. Although George was not in her life very consistently or for very long he did have a profound effect on her future. George Hopkins fathered Dagne’s only daughter, Sonni Anna-Matilda Hopkins. Sonni was born in March of 1967.
Dagne again found herself scheduling her art around a child, but once more managed to remain incredibly productive. After a short trip to Los Angeles with her four youngest children, taken with the intent of giving Sonni a chance to know her father, Dagne and brood moved back to Phoenix to help take care of her mother. Doris entered the hospital in July of 1967 and remained disabled until June of 1968, when she left this planet for a better place.
Dagne and her children moved into the house on 39th street, where they would stay for one year. In June of 1969 Dagne, Jonathan, Evan, Mike and Sonni got into a car and drove across the country to Florida, where they would get on an airplane bound for Puerto Rico. They moved there because Dagne had said that she would never live on an island, and didn’t like to be constrained by limitations that she put on herself.
They lived in Puerto Rico from July of 1969 until January of 1970. Dagne shipped paintings to the Martin Gallery in Scottsdale, where she had been showing consistently since 1966. The children ate roast pig and played in the dirt. After six months the family had had enough, and they returned to Phoenix. They took up residence at 39th Street, and Dagne continued to paint and mother. During this period of time Dagne produced two of her most recognized series of paintings. Miserable Mothers-a series of self portraits inspired by and containing quotes from her children-and Beautiful Indians-a series not necessarily done of but rather inspired by the original settlers of this great country.
In 1974 Joseph Mark Hanson, Chases stepson and an accomplished stained-glass artist, moved in at 39th Street. They were undeniably kindred spirits and love blossomed. In 1976 their son Soren was born, the last of her children. Dagne and Joseph had joint shows throughout Phoenix, as well as independent shows.
Dagne and Joseph still reside at 39th Street, although Willis passed on in 1984. She continues to paint and have shows (most recently a Mother’s Day show at Passage on Central). She still paints, but most importantly she is still a mother. Through all her years as an artist her priority has always been mothering. Although she is most obviously a mother to her children, many would say that she is also a mother for anyone in need of one. Her maternity is vast, generous, and undeniable.
