Sandra M. Sawatzky

Sandra M. Sawatzky is a Canadian filmmaker and textile artist. She has made five short films and a feature film. Sawatzky's embroidered art includes The Black Gold Tapestry, which depicts the history of oil on 220 feet of linen, and the Age of Uncertainty, a series of twelve panels depicting modern anxieties. Sawatzky was awarded the Doug & Lois Mitchell Outstanding Calgary Artist Award in November 2022.

Life Sawatzky was born in Saskatoon. She moved to Calgary to study illustration at the Alberta College of Art and Design (now Alberta University of the Arts). Sawatzky made five short films on dance, and a 2004 feature film The Girl Who Married a Ghost, which adapted a myth belonging to the Nisquali Tribe, telling the story through dance. Sawatzky also taught fashion and the history of textiles at a fashion college during the 1980s. The Black Gold Tapestry

Sawatzky was inspired to create a tapestry on the subject of oil after a visit to an exhibition of embroidery by pioneer women at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary in 2007. It took Sawatzky almost ten years to complete, using the same stitches as the Bayeux Tapestry. Sawatzky describes her work as "film on cloth", saying "it too has a lot of movement and humour". In 2018, a panel was exhibited at the Canadian High Commission in London. Curator Jeff Goodell described the tapestry as "...a wonderful piece. It uses an ancient and very traditional medium, very reminiscent of the Renaissance, to tell the story of the evolution of oil. It’s really lovely in that it’s a kind of storytelling about the long human history and connection around energy". In February to May 2025 it was part of the group exhibition Threads of Change at the Museum of Design in Atlanta Georgia.

Age of Uncertainty Age of Uncertainty is a work of twelve embroidered panels by Sawatzky. Sawatzky received a Canada Council grant to complete the work.

Award Sawatzky was awarded the Doug & Lois Mitchell Outstanding Calgary Artist Award at the Cultural Leaders Legacy Arts Awards in November 2022.