Artist Andrew Clemens: Iowa Time Machine January 29, 1857

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On January 29, 1857, one of the most significant Iowa artists of all time, Andrew Clemens, was born in Dubuque. Clemens went on to invent an art form that no one before or since has truly mastered, forming pictures by compressing natural-colored sands in jars to create intricate designs.

Just five months after Andrew's birth, the Clemens family relocated from Dubuque to McGregor. When Andrew experienced encephalitis at a young age, which caused his lifelong deafness, he faced profound stigmas and challenges common to disability in any era. At the age of 13, Clemens was admitted to the Iowa State School for the Deaf in Council Bluffs, where he spent his academic years, returning to McGregor each summer. During these summer breaks, young Andrew began exploring the spectacular geological formations near his home. He would collect naturally colored grains of sand from an area in Pikes Peak State Park known as Pictured Rocks, where the basal portion of the sandstone near the Sand Cave is naturally colored by iron and mineral staining.

Clemens separated the sand by color into careful piles, then developed his own tools from hickory sticks, florists' wire, and fishing hooks to insert individual grains into glass apothecary bottles. Since he often used round-top bottles with the opening and stopper at the bottom, he had to do all of his intricate work upside down. His process used no glue whatsoever; only the pressure of compressed sand grains and a wax-sealed stopper held each artwork together. When he was 17 in the summer of 1874, Andrew Clemens advertised his sand bottles in the North Iowa Times. His subjects ranged from geometric patterns to steamboats, eagles, flowers, and even George Washington on horseback, each requiring weeks or months to complete.

In 2004, a Clemens sand art glass bottle sold for $12,075 at auction, but that was merely the beginning of a remarkable ascent in collector interest. At a 2018 auction, one of his bottles sold for a record-breaking $132,000, a price reflecting growing recognition of his singular genius. In November 2022, Skinner Auction House broke records when three Andrew Clemens sand bottles brought in nearly 1.8 million dollars, a record for sand bottles sold at a single sale. #Iowa #OTD #History #Art #Sand