Nature in City; City in Nature

I am loving a new creative input—and outlet—these days with artist Annie Asebrook. EvanstonMade had an outdoor art initiative during the month of February at the Canal Shores Golf Club. Annie proposed figuring out an installation using only natural materials with one hour installation time.

And so began a new collaboration exploring nature and city. We share an interest in finding new ways to present and highlight the incredible variety and resilience of the natural world thriving around the built world.

psCO13 common reed Annie Asebrook + Heather Hancock 4/21

My understanding of our biological attunement to the natural world as both restorative and energizing is rooted in the idea that nature provides the perfect balance of pattern/repetition and information/complexity. City environments are often imbalanced, with an overload of implicit and explicit information alongside extreme repetition or chaotic visual noise. Approaching the natural world as information sets helps me understand why staying connected to the natural world is so important to living well in urban environments.

“My eyes have a habit of finding patterns in multitudes. The repeated patterns of nature — found in leaves, pine cones, ferns, burrs — hold my fascination. So do the massive redundancies of modern industrial life, conjuring images of large piles of batteries, or light bulbs, or tires. There’s a strange paradox to these mounds; on the one hand each unit’s individuality is rendered anonymous, and yet, if you look closely enough, one soon realizes that each unit is, however slightly, unique. At the same time, each individual piece does give up its singularity to the collective aesthetic that derives its power from numbers. 
”

— Annie Asebrook

We are approaching weekly installations as inductive explorations in re-framing or re-presenting natural elements in public urban spaces. Each installation is a new opportunity to collect and name natural elements, edit segments for arbitrary discontinuity from nature’s continuity, identify possible new contexts and discover compositions in new geometries and interactions.

We make new discoveries with each installation and hope others who encounter the work will also enjoy a moment of surprise and delight, beauty and humor.

 In using natural materials and public spaces, these installations are ephemeral experiences that disappear with natural forces and elements making an entirely sustainable art making system.

ENCODE series development

I love the creative freedom I am finding with the ENCODE series. Texture and etching and glass inlay and paint are all techniques I can use to create the imagery I can envision. And thinking as larger groupings means I don’t have to ‘say it all’ in each piece. Different elements and motifs can be developed in individual panels to help tell the bigger story.

I love paint on concrete. I always notice paint in parking garages and street markings. Color catches my eye and gives me a jolt of happy. But I also love the elemental, rawness of unpainted sanded texture. I’m thinking I’ll have more individual panels left unpainted to mix in with painted pieces.

ENCODE GO series | glass inlay + sanded texture | each 20”x20" c Heather Hancock 2021

ENCODE GO series | glass inlay + sanded texture + acrylic pant | each 20”x20" c Heather Hancock 2021

SpringGO edition prints

SpringGO art print subscription

Spring Go Edition art print subscription

SpringGO! art prints are ready to head out into the world.

I love having this new easy format for my work. Glass and concrete translates beautifully into paper and ink in these satisfying square prints.

SpringGO! edition art print 8”x8” c Heather Hancock 2021

Nature art collab

Ongoing collab with Annie Asebrook is taking us to fun new materials and ideas. Here’s what we did with Common Reed stems.

BUILD: February art print arriving

I love getting images of art prints settled into new homes. February art print, BUILD, features an intertwining vine full of possibility. Architectural building becomes a stand-in for the optimistic and deeply inspiring idea that we are all builders. This essentially creative act finds expression with myriad materials and tools and product.

Nature art: Icicle city

A couple weeks ago, Annie Asebrook proposed a 1 hour challenge: figure out a temporary concept ideally with only natural materials and 1 hour installation time as part of EvanstonMade’s Winter Wonderland at Canal Shores Golf club. 

Since I ordinarily work with glass+concrete, it’s very freeing and playful to think about what materials and process can work as an entirely ephemeral experience. When Annie texted a picture of icicles I was immediately interested. Glass is a manmade material that mimics reflective materials in the natural world, especially water+ice. My interest in glass as an art medium comes from its unique capacity to catch and reflect light, creating a dynamic shifting visual experience that is a (very pale) imitation of the constant change and transformation we thrive on in the natural world.

Testing icicles 2/20/21

Testing icicles 2/20/21

Annie carefully extracted icicles from around her home+yard. I took to the alleys, finding unnoticed icicles in reach on the back of garages. This natural form, ubiquitous in early spring melts transformed into a building material.

We initially thought we would see an icicle forest take shape.

Detail Icicle city 2/21/21

Annie Asebrook 2/21/21

Heather Hancock 2/21/21

As we placed icicles a city skyline was clearly emerging. A lovely city-in-nature and nature-in-city connection.

Icicle city (detail) Annie Asebrook + Heather Hancock 2/21/21

Icicle city (detail) Annie Asebrook + Heather Hancock 2/21/21

We took images knowing that with the temperature at 35 through the rest of the day and night the work was shrinking and would disappear by morning. Such a satisfying thing to create an ephemeral experience that returns to nature without a trace.

New ideas for spring GO series

I’m busy sketching ideas for spring GO series. Given my precision cutting approach to glass, I do refine ideas digitally. This helps translate ideas into material form. Things evolve while I’m cutting from this base composition. This spring is GO time! Heading back outdoors in search of color and signs of life and just maybe some social interaction. The words I’m encoding for this series include go, grow and bloom. And exploring lots of juicy ideas about nature-in-city and city-in-nature.

Happy Valentine's Day

February print arrived in time for Valentine’s—US shipments at least. : )

Crisp coherent line

Something about a crisp coherent line that I find deeply satisfying: the horizon over Lake Michigan, precise rhythms of an architectural facade, street markings on asphalt.

Final hanging | Art for home

I’m thrilled with this new hanging of ENCODE pieces. I love the grays+warm oranges in the white room. They are shimmering and catching light as I expected : )

ENCODE: BUILD BLOOM FOCUS 20”x20” hand cut glass + paint c Heather Hancock

ENCODE: BUILD BLOOM FOCUS 20”x20” hand cut glass + paint c Heather Hancock

ENCODE: BUILD BLOOM FOCUS 20”x20” hand cut glass + paint c Heather Hancock

Repeating themes | Art in conversation

I am continuing to understand how my work is weaving together. Previous pieces and small technical sketches turn into new vocabulary elements. I am thinking again about how SCAN could be integrated into ENCODE as a compositional approach. I love the vertical flow of information conveyed in SCAN compositions. ENCODE emerged as a deconstructed simplified version of the text element. I could see SCAN composition now being informed by ENCODE with more negative space/silver textured canvas.

top L Encode: BLOOM 20”x20” | top R SCAN 26”x36” | bottom R Encode: BLOOM 20"x20” | bottom L urban vine 14”x14”

ENCODE | weaving together ideas + interests

I recently started grouping art across series and have noticed 3 things.

ENCODE: BUILD | REFLECT 22x22 | REFLECT Truss Study 24x24 | stringer sketch | power tower study

1. Concepts and motifs are starting to weave together and interconnect. I can see how small explorations have been incorporated in my visual vocabulary to be used in different ways in other work.

2. There is a common underlying theme of “seeing the city’"…or maybe more accurately “reading the city.”

   Approaching the city as information, I have explored the vocabulary of architecture in REFLECT. Add in the human body+mind and regular architectural line and form is distorted by visual perception.

   In ENCODE I am again exploring information. There’s implicit information in surfaces and textures and transitions (ie thinking city infrastructure: roadways, sidewalks, buildings). And there’s explicit information in signage and markings that guide, direct and limit behavior. ENCODE re-purposes this material and typographic vocabulary. Approaching language as a generative force, compositions use both form and content to offer new information. Inspiring ideas are presented as a partially abstracted sculptural form and embedded in enduring concrete.

   The other piece to ENCODE is that reference to nature in the graphic leaf element. I often talk about the points of intersection between city+nature. But I’ve been thinking of a false dichotomy between city and nature, or an artificial boundary that simply doesn’t exist. Every city is plunked on top of nature…and nature rebounds and grows and does its best around our engineering. It is the ultimate model of resilience. Transforming and thriving in hard environment. There’s more to explore here for sure but for now, nature is fully integrated into this vocabulary. I struggle with whether this reduced/graphic approach is the right idea. Lots to think about here.

3. Adding in the circle seems to be all about joy for me. I’ve often incorporated circles into my work. I love how simple this painted circle is. It makes me happy.

I can start to see how work from different series is in interesting dialog.

Art for home

Art for Residential Spaces

I’m working on an art hanging for our living room. I’ve banged nails into this wall for art hangings for years and it was high time for patching and a paint refresh. I used Benjamin Moore Decorator White. Looks great.

Benjamin Moore Decorator White refresh

I originally thought I wanted a set of two or three ENCODE pieces with pale steel blue accents. As I started looking at pieces in the space, turns out I’m more drawn to the warm oranges. And totally loving all the different shades of orange that I’ve explored this year. So thinking a set of ENCODES with orange and possibly balanced with one gray one.

warm oranges | ENCODE series 20”x20” c Heather Hancock 2020

For now, my plan is to be able to hang sets of 2 and 3s on this wall. And swap out work over time. I love living with work and seeing the differences with daily and seasonal cycles. I’ll start with this grouping. And I am toying with softening the gray in the right panel. TBD.

Encode BLOOM BUILD FOCUS glass + paint 20”x20”

Inauguration day

Feels like a whole new start today. Staying focused on THRIVE. How do we make space for everyone to thrive? Looking forward to big ideas and renewed energy in 2021.

Green for white+gray January

I come back to green + gray again and again in my work. Nature finding a way to thrive around the hard cold urban textures of concrete and asphalt and brick serves as a model of resilience.

Winter Survival Edition | art prints (January THRIVE)

Winter Survival Edition | art prints (January THRIVE)

Encode art postcards | packaging up

The January prints arrived. So happy with how the texture and reflectance in my work translates into ink and paper. Now for packaging up.

Winter Survival Edition art prints | January

Winter Survival Edition art prints | January

Winter Survival Edition art prints | January

Encode art postcards | Winter Survival Edition

I’m thrilled with a new art subscription option that offers an easy way to live with art every day. Less ephemeral than Instagram…and not the full commitment of an original...one art postcard arrives per month for three months. The first print ships mid January with a gorgeous little maple photo stand crafted by Evanston woodworker Tony Sosa.

I see this as a new space for curation and innovation, taking work offline and back into the physical world. It gives me the ‘conversation’ over time I crave as an artist. I love how the prints translate texture and reflectance into ink and paper for a completely new experience of my work.

Winter Survival Edition 8”x8” art postcards | sent 1/month for 3 months

maple photo stand comes with 1st art postcard delivery

maple photo stand

Winter Survival Edition | art postcard series

REFLECT inspo

And I have thousands of images of built world moments that inspire my REFLECT series. It is our interaction with the line and transitions in the streetscape that creates infinite unique perspectives and rhythms.

Sample inspo | REFLECT series

REFLECT 3.9 edge | 2@48”x30” glass c Heather Hancock 2019