"I was born in Watertown, Wisconsin on moving day - not very considerate of me was it? My family lived in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Washington state before settling in Tucson, Arizona. My parents had never been in the Southwest before we moved here, and they didn't know too much about it - except that it was hot. But when they looked at a map of Tucson and saw there were two rivers running through town, they thought it couldn't be all that bad - you could always cool off with a swim. Big surprise! When we arrived in August the two Tucson rivers were (as they usually are) bone dry. But my parents liked the sunshine, and they thought playing tennis was a lot more fun than shoveling snow. So they stayed. My brother Tom and I grew up in Tucson, and our sister Lynn was born there. Tucson was a small town back then. I walked a mile to school through the desert, with roadrunners and quail for company - and we lived in the middle of town! I graduated from the University of Arizona with a BFA in Art. Besides Painting, Drawing, and Printmaking, I took a lot of other classes - like Physics, Philosophy of Aesthetics, and Spanish. I wasn't much good in Physics, but I loved the Philosophy class because it was all about why things are considered beautiful or artistic. And of course I've found Spanish to be very useful all my life."--personal website of Joan Sandin.

Originally published: Harper & Row, ℗♭1976.