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Designer

Clint Hansen

The Iowa illustrator who won a U.S. Mint contest — and put his art on two Atlanta Olympic coins

Most U.S. coins are designed inside the Mint. Two of the Atlanta Olympic half dollars were not — they came from an Iowa freelance artist named Clint Hansen, who entered an open competition and won.

Who he is

In the early 1990s the U.S. Mint did something it rarely does. To design the flood of coins for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, it opened the door to outside artists. One of the people who walked through it was Clint Hansen — a freelance illustrator from Iowa with no coin in his portfolio. He entered the competition, and he won.

Hansen is an Iowa native and, by his own account, a fifth-generation artist. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Iowa State University in 1987, graduating cum laude, and has worked as a full-time professional artist ever since. His base is Urbandale, a suburb of Des Moines.

His work reaches well beyond coins. A portrait he painted of Iowa congressman Jim Nussle hangs in the U.S. Capitol's permanent collection, and three large mosaic murals he designed live at Iowa State University. But for collectors, the reason his name surfaces is the two small clad coins he put into millions of hands during the Atlanta Games.

The craft

Hansen's signature medium is scratchboard — a technique where the artist works in reverse. You start with a board coated in black ink over a white clay surface, then scratch the image out of the dark, line by line, with a sharp blade. Light comes from removing material, not adding it. The result is crisp, high-contrast, almost engraved-looking — which is exactly the visual language a coin needs.

That instinct shows in his Olympic obverses (the "heads" side, the side a designer's vision usually defines). For the 1995 basketball half dollar he gave the Mint three players caught mid-game; his design was then translated into sculpture — modeled into the metal relief — by Mint engraver Alfred Maletsky. For the 1996 soccer half dollar he chose two women in play, a quietly notable choice for an Olympic coin of that era.

He is not a Mint staff sculptor and never was. He is an outside designer whose drawings the Mint's own engravers turned into dies. On his own client list he counts "(2) U.S. Mint coin designs" alongside the U.S. Olympic Committee — a tidy summary of a brief, real brush with the nation's coinage.

Key facts

Nationality
American
Born / based
Iowa; based in Urbandale, Iowa
Education
BFA (cum laude), Iowa State University, 1987
Signature medium
Scratchboard
Mint role
Outside competition-winning designer (not a staff engraver)
Coin designs
1995 Atlanta Olympic basketball half dollar (obverse); 1996 Atlanta Olympic soccer half dollar (obverse)
Other works
Jim Nussle portrait (U.S. Capitol collection); mosaic murals, Iowa State University

Questions collectors ask

Who designed the 1995 Olympic basketball half dollar?

Clint Hansen designed the obverse — the three basketball players. The design was then modeled into relief by U.S. Mint engraver Alfred Maletsky. The reverse, shared across the 1995 Olympic half dollars, was the work of Mint sculptor T. James Ferrell.

Did Clint Hansen design the 1996 Olympic soccer half dollar too?

Yes — the obverse, showing two women playing soccer, is his. It is the second of the two U.S. Mint coin designs he credits to himself, both from the Atlanta Olympic program.

Was Clint Hansen a U.S. Mint engraver?

No. He is an independent Iowa artist who won an open design competition for the Atlanta Olympic coins. His drawings were turned into coin dies by the Mint's own sculptor-engravers — a common split between the designer and the modeler on commemorative coins.

What is scratchboard, his main medium?

Scratchboard is a subtractive technique: the artist scratches a white image out of a black-inked surface with a blade, so the picture emerges from the dark. It produces the sharp, high-contrast line work that suits coin design.

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