Grow | re-imagining urban spaces
Enjoyed working on a massive canvas for Evanston Streets Alive 2016 to offer pedestrians a moment of surprise. Grow transforms built world elements into organic, growing foliage. Realized in chalk, the piece offers an ephemeral experience, consistent with the constant change and transformation we find in nature. Living well in urban settings requires new ways of seeing beauty and staying connected to the natural world.
bike lane stencil | nature meets city
UrbanVines: nature meets city
I have an image of ivy growing on a crumbling concrete wall in my studio. I love the image of nature connecting with the built world; constant change and transformation happening on different time scales. I often circle back around to 'how do I grow ivy on a concrete wall?' Working on the installation plan for a temporary street intersection mural brought me back to cement board as a gorgeous textured canvas perfect for my work in glass.
Nature meets city in UrbanVines.
UrbanVine 1.1 | glass and paint marker on cement board | 14"x14" c Heather Hancock 2016
UrbanVine 2.1 | glass and paint marker on cement board | 14"x14" c Heather Hancock 2016
Grow: Urban palettes + textures
Super excited to be creating another temporary public art installation. This time using spray chalk on an asphalt canvas at Main and Custer as part of this Sunday's Evanston Streets Alive event.
This project brings together my passion for bringing the natural world into urbanscapes and my growing interest in temporary public art. Working with temporary materials offers an ephemeral visual experience for pedestrians, echoing the constant transformation and changes we see in the natural world.
I've re-worked one of my core visual concepts Grow as a large-scale intersection installation to offer pedestrians a moment of surprise and discovery. Borrowing from the streetscape palette, the installation will be created in weathered whites with pops of safety green and orange.
concept Grow | nature meets city | c Heather Hancock 2016
Urban palettes: Lake Michigan | 14"x14" | hanging at EvanstonMade pop-up store | Evanston Art Center $390 each
EvanstonMade 2016
View 2.4 | 20"x20" | hanging at EvanstonMade group show | Evanston Art Center $1900
View 2.3, 2.5, 2.6 | 20"x20" | EvanstonMade Open Studio Event
Urban palettes: Lake Michigan | 14"x14" | EvanstonMade Open Studio event
EvanstonMade | Open Studio event
EvanstonMade | Open Studio event
EvanstonMade Open Studio event
Urban palettes
The most compelling aspect of working with glass is the way the material loves light, sparkling and shimmering to engage a viewer. Many of the images I take involve light and shadow. I get to the Lake Michigan lakefront as often as possible, usually in the morning, and am amazed at the constant variation in light and palette and texture of the lake bounded by rock and sky. I am starting to explore how to translate this sometimes subtle light and color into a shimmering glass palette in a spare yet luminous art object.
The starting point for this exploration is using an image from a specific date to develop this palette and vocabulary.
work-in-progress | Urban palettes | Lake Michigan May 03 2016 | 14"x 14"
work-in-progress | Urban palettes | Lake Michigan May 28 2015 14"x14"
work-in-progress | Urban palettes | Lake Michigan Feb 16 2016 14"x14"
Painting with Glass
Working as an artist means a continually evolving story. I worked with amazing designer Julie Nelson to crystalize my story and showcase some of my recent work. Take a Peek at the digital version. Print version available upon request.
EvanstonMade
Reflect | urban vocabulary
Glass loves light. Reflecting, shimmering, sparkling, refracting. I work with glass to create luminous experiences that change with motion and light.
I think a lot about what draws our attention, and why. An element of surprise or unpredictability always makes us notice. In among the repetitive forms of our cityscape, fluidity of light and reflection, unusual perspectives and juxtapositions take on the qualities of the natural. So many of those moments involve glass. The perfect Miesian grid or the undulating balconies of the Aqua building offer endless visual interest when we consider architecture in interaction with movement and light. I use glass to re-create those moments and to offer a sustaining viewing experience that is infinitely variable.
New work in Reflect series is underway in grayscale.
Reflect 3.2 | Aqua 24"x24" : Reflect 4.1 | Chase tower 24"x24" : Reflect 2.3 | Mies 900 LSD 24"x24"
View featured in NS Modern Luxury
View is featured in the spring issue of NS Modern Luxury!
EvanstonMade | new work
EvanstonMade is coming up in June. I'm excited to develop a new graphic concept...with a new presentation. Here's a sneak peek at some preliminary pieces.
Ocean | San Diego glass+grout | 10"x10" > 14"x14" framed c Heather Hancock 2016
Lake | Chicago glass+grout | 10"x10" > 14"x14" framed c Heather Hancock 2016
Spring | Chicago glass+grout | 10"x10" > 14"x14" framed c Heather Hancock 2016
San Diego views
I'm delighted to have completed artwork for the Kaiser Permanente hospital support building in San Diego. Integrating natural and vernacular imagery with a bold San Diego palette, the pieces will create shimmering visual features for three waiting areas. Some of the imagery needed to be developed across multiple vertical panels given they will hang on curved walls.
Artwork is en route to San Diego and I am looking forward to final in situ images.
Here are preliminary images of the three series.
View | bridge 4@16"x30" c Heather Hancock 2016
View | mountains 5@16"x30" c Heather Hancock 2016
City | San Diego skyline 3@24"x24" c Heather Hancock 2016
Pop-up Gallery
Fantastic turn out for our pop-up gallery on a snowy January evening. Work hangs through February and can be seen by appointment with any of participating artists.
Artificial Turf: Pop-up gallery | Evanston, IL
Artificial Turf: Pop-up gallery | Evanston, IL
Artificial Turf: Pop-up gallery | Evanston, IL
Artificial Turf: Pop-up gallery | Evanston, IL
12 North Shore artists you'll want to know about in 2016
Looking forward to this Saturday's pop-up art show with a group of 12 North Shore artists working in various media.
Inspired by the Evanston location--and the awesome brick walls of the warehouse--I'm showing pieces from the series View.
In View, I explore the rhythm and spare beauty of urbanscapes. Power lines create criss-crossed frames of sky and the architectural elements of familiar Evanston facades offer variation in line and form.
Living in urban settings requires new ways of seeing beauty and staying connected to nature. While nature gives us a perfect balance of repetition and variation, the built world can read as a highly repetitive sequence of precision architectural materials and chaotic transitions. Discovering points of intersection between the built and natural world is a strategy for thriving on our ‘artificial turf.’
View 2.2 | Hinman and Kenzie | 20" x 20" mixed media with glass
Proust project at KEN SAUNDERS GALLERY
Wonderful evening celebrating the launch of Dr. Virginia Barry's Scratch and Sniff Proust and the art pieces I developed as visuals for the book.
Friday opening | Ken Saunders Gallery, Chicago, IL
Author Virginia Barry (left) and artist Heather Hancock (right)
Saturday morning artist and author talk
Saturday morning artist talk
Proust project | Hawthorns, Madeleines and Combray @ 24"x32"
Proust project | Madeleines and Combray 12"x16"
Proust project | 9 pieces at 12"x16"
Jacket design by Heather Hancock
sample art page | with images by Heather Hancock | Flourish
Evanston magazine | November issue
Upcoming show at Ken Saunders Gallery
What do you get when you combine French modernist fiction, the neuroscience of smell, psychoanalytic theory and my art? A creative departure. A year-long collaboration. And a book by psychiatrist Dr. Virginia Barry, illustrated with my glass art and photography.
Virginia's book, Scratch and Sniff Proust "began as a wisp of a joke and has evolved into something much more–part neuroscience, part art, part psychoanalysis, part fun. You can smell some of the fragrances from Proust’s world as you learn why smell affects you differently from all the other senses."
I would be delighted if you could join us at Ken Saunders Gallery in River North for the launch of:
Friday, December 4th at 5-7:30p | Opening reception and book signing with wine and cheese
Saturday, December 5th at 10-noon | Writer and artist talks with brunch RSVP here
Ken Saunders Gallery
230 W. Superior St. | Chicago, IL | 312.573.1400
Nine art pieces developed for the project will be hanging at the gallery through the month of December.
Readers of Evanston feature
in General
Flourish is featured today on Readers of Evanston. Earlier this week, I had great conversation with Katie Barthelemy from Evanston Public Library who structures the conversation with my all-time favorite question "what are you reading?" here's what Readers of Evanston wrote:
Heather Hancock is a visual artist and the creator of Flourish in downtown Evanston. “One of the things I’m really interested in is how the urban landscape influences our behavior, and our mood, and our affect, and what we can do in the urban world streetscape to create a moment of surprise or discovery. In the natural world there is constant change and variety, but in the built world, we see a lot of repetition. I’m interested in how we connect the natural world to the built world; but also, on a beautiful brick wall, how do we create something that is different and surprising?” Flourish is just that: a beautiful installment of reflectors and tape on an outer brick wall meant to be a temporary exhibition— it will disappear again within the next two weeks. Glass, Heather’s usual medium, "is all about lasting forever, so it was really a fun to think ‘what can we build that has visual impact but can be a temporary installation?’”
Heather’s choice of reading, Places of the heart: The psychogeography of everyday life, connects to her work and her mission: Canadian psychologist Colin Ellard, studies how “architecture, streetscapes, [and] facades effect our experience of place and our well-being. It’s really exciting work because that’s exactly what I’m interested in with my work. Another relevant and amazing book is Nesting: Body, Dwelling, Mind by Sarah Robinson which offers another take on thinking about what it is in our built world that helps us live well."
Flourish is now on display outside the Other Brother Coffee House on Sherman and Grove. Heather explains, “Downtown Evanston commissioned Flourish as part of their initiative to create engaging public spaces. Given I’m usually engineering pieces that will last forever I enjoyed developing concepts for a playful, short-term urban experience." Re-purposing functional materials (masonry tape and reflectors) and lines from the built world, Flourish interacts with motion and ambient light to offer pedestrians a moment of surprise in the streetscape.
Flourish | a temporary public art installation
in General
My work centers around finding the points of intersection between the built and natural worlds. I'm a firm believer in EO Wilson's concept of biophilia, that humans are attuned to the natural world and maintaining that connection is integral to our well-being. I'm equally interested in finding information and beauty in the precision geometries, repetition and structure of the urban environment; shorthand: "living well in the built world." So I was delighted when the innovative urban planner+landscape architecture firm Teska Associates and Downtown Evanston asked me to generate some ideas for a temporary public art installation as part of a 'people space' or parklet concept. Understanding how to create engaging public spaces fits well with my interests in creating engaging visual experiences. Public art is an opportunity to create moments of surprise and discovery. And, in this case, an opportunity to source and experiment with temporary, removable materials.
Flourish is a playful re-imagining of lines and forms from the built world as organic, growing elements. Functional materials--masonry tape and bike reflectors--are re-purposed to create a new experience of the streetscape.
In daylight, the piece is fresh greens with popping accents in reds and ambers.
In the evening, ambient light and motion makes for a flickering, shimmering walk-by experience.
Living in urban landscapes requires new ways of seeing beauty and finding moments of surprise in the repetition and precision of the built environment.
Big thanks to Downtown Evanston for commissioning this project...and being game to experiment with this concept. Stay tuned for the next steps at this corner with Teska Associates, Downtown Evanston and The Other Brother Coffeehouse.
