[1] She moved to California in 1955, first living in Marin County, before settling in San Francisco in the early 1970s where she purchased and restored Nightingale House,[2] located on Buchanan Street to landmark status.
[5] Hanson died at her home, of cancer, on March 13, 2007, in which she was remembered by SFGate as a "green activist" who used street trash in her work.
She analyzed and classified what she found as a way of documenting daily life in her district and felt that it reflected a disconnect between the consumption and production of goods and the natural world.
Approximately 200 artists have participated in the program including Michael Arcega, Jane Kim, Estelle Akamine, Terry Berlier, Val Britton, Dee Hibbert-Jones, Packard Jennings, Kara Maria, Hector Dionicio Mendoza, Sirron Norris, Isis Rodriguez, Stephanie Syjuco, and Nomi Talisman.
Magazine interviews and television news coverage alerted the San Francisco audience to these intentions, certainly, and to one other: consistently identifying herself with her profession, Hanson created a work linking social concerns with art in a directly accessible manner.
[5] “Her personal act of sweeping her sidewalk grew into a celebrated public art practice and citywide anti-litter campaign.
Hanson compiled volumes of urban detritus that are now recognized as an artistic tour de force which raised community awareness as it chronicled rapidly changing demographics.”[5] One of Hanson's best known works is Crab Orchard Cemetery, a re-creation of her ancestral cemetery in Illinois, which opened at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1974.