The Sand Catcher                                                        The thesis project The Sand Catcher investigates the encounter between permanent structures and an ever-changing landscape. The migrating sand dune Råbjerg Mile in northern Denmark is 40 meters high and moves more than 15 meters every year. By introducing a solid structure on the site, the fast movement of the sand dune is emphasised and thereby our view of time and space. Through intuitively building models with varied openings and densities I investigated how architectural elements react with sand. From these experiments a series of spatial features and effects were found, generated from the meeting with the sand. The Sand Catcher is a solid and permanent structure. The sand is the liquid element that generates new spaces, circulations and experiences. The Sand Catcher highlights natural processes in the landscape and its relation to time and rhythm. The structure becomes a watchtower, a landmark, a measuring stick, an hourglass. The Sand Catcher is a concrete structure with doors of glass. Gradually the surface will be sandblasted and polished, marked by the sand dune passing through. In 30 years from now the Sand Catcher will be covered by sand. In another 100 years the Sand Catcher is left alone in the barren landscape. But the traces of the sand dune remain. / Sandfångaren   Projektet Sandfångaren undersöker mötet mellan en permanent struktur och ett landskap i förändring. Den vandrande sanddynan Råbjerg Mile i norra Danmark är 40 meter hög och flyttar sig över Nordjyllands udde 15 meter per år. Genom att introducera en permanent struktur på platsen framhävs sanddynans framfart och därmed också människans syn på tid och plats. Genom att intuitivt bygga modeller med varierade öppningar och förtätningar undersöktes relationen mellan en förändrad sandnivå och en serie fasta element. Resultaten från experimenten visade på rumsligheter och effekter som uppstår i mötet med sanden. När sanddynan möter byggnaden genereras nya rum, rörelsemönster och upplevelser. Sandfångaren uppmärksammar vår syn på tid och landskapets processer. Strukturen blir ett utkikstorn, ett landmärke, en mätsticka, ett timglas. Sandfångaren är gjord av massiv betong och har dörrar av tjockt glas. Sanden lämnar över tid en blästrad och slipad yta, ett spår av sandens framfart. Efter 30 år kommer Sandfångaren nästan att vara helt täckt av sand. Efter ytterligare 100 år står Sandfångaren ensam, lämnad i det karga landskapet. Men spåren finns kvar av sanddynan.

This dissertation reframes the Danish artist Anna Ancher (1859-1935) by expanding the context in which the artist has been considered, to position her as a Symbolist, modernist and independent artist. A revered and familiar artist in Denmark, most scholars discuss her paintings in association with the development of the art colony in Skagen, an important site of Denmark's Modern Breakthrough in the 1880s. The represented image of Ancher in paintings by male colonists during this period indicated her centrality within the group, depicted her as a fashionable bourgeois wife and respectable mother, but simultaneously neglected to reference the development of her professional practice. By 1889, Ancher had sold major paintings and gained national and international recognition. Michael Ancher's portrait of his wife in reform dress in Coming Home from Market (1902) signifies her freedom from conventional gender roles. Despite her affiliation with the Skagen colony, Ancher matured as a painter during the 1890s after its heyday. At this time Danish Symbolism and Vitalism came to eclipse the Naturalist orientation of the prior decade. The painter's study in Paris in 1889 and her contacts in cosmopolitan Copenhagen forged an avant-garde network that in many ways referenced, but also resisted, movements from the urban French center. An aesthetic that draws from the ostensibly contradictory and divergent ideas of Charles Baudelaire, Hans Christian Andersen and Friedrich Nietzsche can be found in Ancher's painting, positioning her alongside other Danish Symbolists. Ancher was also a native of the Jutland peninsula, which experienced the growth of pietist movements and major shifts impacting agricultural labor. Ancher's paintings of religion and harvest at the beginning of the twentieth century challenged contemporary French primitivist images of Breton peasants, especially those of Paul Gauguin. After 1900, Ancher's increasingly abstract paintings of unoccupied interiors reflect the complex modernist shift in valuation of the dwelling and a new emphasis on minimal decoration and strong planar surfaces in the home as conducive to physical and psychological health. In her paintings of her own studio, Ancher challenged normative gendered divisions in the organization of the home and asserted her identity as an autonomous artist. / Art History