"Buddy System"
Hanna Washburn
April 10 - 16, 2021
Statement
My practice involves making sculptures out of recycled clothing and textiles, usually on the scale of bodies or body parts. I have been gradually introducing ceramics into my sculptures. Intertwining this new and very different material into my work has meant a lot of experimentation.
In my studio, these small ceramic-textile hybrids feel like knickknacks I would find in my grandmother’s house, or childhood relics stored in my parents’ attic. In the Smallbany gallery, these objects take on the scale of bodies or furniture. The way I relate to them is so different; their personalities become life-sized. I am really interested in this idea of encountering a ceramic object on a human scale, something normally so small and intimate assuming an imposing physicality. This feels related to memory for me— the way certain moments or items can loom especially large. It is like the experience of encountering an object from your childhood as an adult, and it is so much smaller than you remember.
Hanna Washburn was born in Boston, MA, and currently lives and works in Beacon, NY. She received her MFA in Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts in 2018, and her BA in Fine Art and English Literature from Kenyon College in 2014. Washburn has exhibited with Sotheby’s Institute of Art (New York, NY), The Affordable Art Fair (New York, NY), Rice University (Houston, TX), Chashama (New York, NY), Russell Sage College (Albany, NY) and the Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute (Utica, NY). She has held residences at Monson Arts (2020), Vermont Studio Center (2019), the Society of Arts + Crafts in Boston (2019), the Textile Arts Center (2018), and the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Colony (2018). Washburn has been featured in The New York Times, The Visual Arts Journal, and the Brooklyn Art Library Times.
Hanna Washburn
April 10 - 16, 2021
Statement
My practice involves making sculptures out of recycled clothing and textiles, usually on the scale of bodies or body parts. I have been gradually introducing ceramics into my sculptures. Intertwining this new and very different material into my work has meant a lot of experimentation.
In my studio, these small ceramic-textile hybrids feel like knickknacks I would find in my grandmother’s house, or childhood relics stored in my parents’ attic. In the Smallbany gallery, these objects take on the scale of bodies or furniture. The way I relate to them is so different; their personalities become life-sized. I am really interested in this idea of encountering a ceramic object on a human scale, something normally so small and intimate assuming an imposing physicality. This feels related to memory for me— the way certain moments or items can loom especially large. It is like the experience of encountering an object from your childhood as an adult, and it is so much smaller than you remember.
Hanna Washburn was born in Boston, MA, and currently lives and works in Beacon, NY. She received her MFA in Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts in 2018, and her BA in Fine Art and English Literature from Kenyon College in 2014. Washburn has exhibited with Sotheby’s Institute of Art (New York, NY), The Affordable Art Fair (New York, NY), Rice University (Houston, TX), Chashama (New York, NY), Russell Sage College (Albany, NY) and the Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute (Utica, NY). She has held residences at Monson Arts (2020), Vermont Studio Center (2019), the Society of Arts + Crafts in Boston (2019), the Textile Arts Center (2018), and the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Colony (2018). Washburn has been featured in The New York Times, The Visual Arts Journal, and the Brooklyn Art Library Times.
