Hannah O’Hare Bennett
Central Library Bubbler Room
May - June 2018
Hannah O'Hare Bennett grew up on a small organic farm in Kansas, where she was in constant contact with the textures of the natural world. Integral to Bennett’s residency with The Bubbler was inviting gallery-goers to examine materials and use them in unconventional ways. She is particularly interested in exploring notions of domesticity, nature, and materials.
“In my art, I use the objects of domestic life—vessels, combs, embroidery patterns, etc.—and imagine what would happen if they were living beings returning to the wild and had to defend and propagate on their own,” Bennett remarked in an interview with Art Lit Lab.
As a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador, she saw beautiful weavings made by local people, learned how to knit, and a seed of what would become her career in fiber based arts was planted. Then, as a graduate student, she encountered the craft of paper making by hand, an art form that holds infinite possibilities. Ultimately, her work emerges from the tactile and obsessive labor of farming, and the patterns and textures of the Midwestern landscape. She exhibits work around the country, teaches workshops, and takes on custom dye, quilting and paper projects, as well as working part time as a substitute in Dane county public schools.
During this residency, O’Hare Bennett invited participants to make works of art inspired by nature and domesticated nature. Objects could expand or shrink, grow harder or softer, explode outward or bind shut, become evenly patterned or patchy, spikier or smoother, or more noticeable or more camouflaged. A book could go feral, extending longer and longer over two months. She led workshops on making paper from plant material and old rags, learning embroidery patterns, and then letting them go wild. The residency emphasized reusing and recycling materials and conscious decision-making around when new materials are the best choice.
Return to the residency archive.
