A year ago, we were busy at Finch Lane Gallery installing our 35×35 exhibit, a showcase for Utah’s young artistic talent. Then the closures hit. (The exhibit only opened to the public, in a limited way, in June.) A year since the closures, we have decided to check in with the artists from 35×35 to see what they’re working on now in our WIP feature.
Anita Hawkins says that due to the size and complexity of the piece currently in her studio, she has been working on it on and off for over a year. “The focused making of it has been helpful in pushing out everything else,” she says.
Hawkins graduated from the University of Utah in 2019. She has focused her arts education and process on contemporary textile practices, converging on crochet as synchronized paint and sculpture mediums. Influenced by the Abstract Expressionists and Neo Dadaists, she makes works that proclaim both their textile sensuality and laborious process while relating to art history and curation traditions.
“This [current] work is attempting to address the landscape as figurative, i.e. having the viewer approach the portrayal of the landscape as a human (female) presence. Completed, it would be near human scale (about 5 feet) and represents one of the sandstone formations in Moab, but through my interest in crocheted abstracted color and form.”
“Ideally, the installation would be mounted outward from a wall with about an inch between each layer, making it a more interesting and involved viewing experience.”
The concept of the work came in collaboration with Amy Ungricht, a mixed-media artist originally from Salt Lake City now in New York, whose works explore the feminized landscape, or how the toxic treatment of the land echoes the historicity of the treatment of women.
“This is an experimental evolution of some of my ideas about form and genre. However, the complexity of creation and installation make further similar works on this scale improbable.”
You can see more of her work at http://instagram.com/anitahawks
This 15 Bytes feature talks with artists about what is on their “easel” right now.
Categories: Visual Arts | WIP