Sandra Williams is an interdisciplinary artist who works across a broad range of practices, including cut paper, painting, murals, community art, and social practice. Her work has been exhibited at SOFA New York, Ann Nathan Gallery in Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art in St. Louis, Missouri, Museo Taller Erasto Cortes in Puebla, Mexico, The Studios of Key West in Key West, Florida, and National Amazon University in Puerto Maldonado, Peru. Her work is included in the Howard Tullman Collection, The Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, and several private collections. She was awarded artist residencies at The Studios of Key West, Florida; Rogers Art Loft in Las Vegas, Nevada; Arquetopia, Puebla, Mexico; the Contemporary Crafts Museum in Portland, Oregon; and with the Amazon Conservation Association in Madre de Dios, Peru. Recognition for her work includes a Mayor’s Art Award, thirteen Parents Association Awards for Contributions to Students, a Hixson Lied Award for Senior Faculty Achievement in Research and Creative Activity, a Hixson-Lied Curriculum Development Award, and two Hixson-Lied Awards for Outreach, Engagement, and Service. Sandra is the Visual Arts Chair for the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association. 

Her most recent work explores the tension between presence, absence, and systems of erasure through the intersection of textiles, light, and subtraction. By combining cyanotype, sewing, and paper cutting, she creates garments that show that subtraction is not destruction, that erasure becomes visible, and that what is removed is as tangible as what remains. It explores the persistence of the social and cultural past and its continued influence on the present. This series investigates narratives of slow violence in the United States, using garments as a central theme. This choice is based on the view that bodies are historical constructs. A long history of shaping the social and visual body has invented time, staged place, and enacted power. Much of the imagery relates to the invented concept of landscape, using these images to represent cultivated, aestheticized, and colonized spaces.

Additional work includes social practice projects emphasizing creative facilitation, community needs, and restorative justice.