Playing with mixing grayscale, textured pieces with the playful popping color pieces.
ENCODE series @ 20”x20” hand cut glass + concrete c Heather Hancock 2021
fall color inspo
It’s been an incredibly long beautiful fall. Fall color is still catching my eye whenever I’m out walking.
new collection of prints
Yay! A new collection of prints is now available. Loving these glossy prints on film and glassine. Somehow they’re both bold and ephemeral at the same time. On a wood print stand, any amount of light makes them glow. Or they stay bold and saturated when framed with a bright white mat.
Every time I come back to these I see a new idea to explore and they keep evolving in such a fun way.
Lobby installation: Scan/MOVE
Scan/MOVE 10 panels @6’x1.5’ hand cut glass + concrete c Heather Hancock 2021 | photo credit Art Matters
Exciting to see my work at a larger scale for a recent lobby installation project. The composition used abstracted versions of the clients’ core value “MOVE” translated into ten global languages. A rhythm of intricate cut glass is balanced with simple glass color rhythms using the clients’ corporate palette.
Scan/MOVE 10 panels @6’x1.5’ hand cut glass + concrete c Heather Hancock 2021 | photo credit Art Matters
Scan/MOVE 10 panels @6’x1.5’ hand cut glass + concrete c Heather Hancock 2021 | photo credit Art Matters
ENCODE | new work
ENCODE | 2@20”x20” hand cut glass, concrete texture,
Print formats: ink + light
I’ve been continuing to explore print ideas that connect with my interests in line + light. I love the versatility of printed versions of my work. Turns out it’s a helpful tool for experimenting with ideas and directions. And, then it’s satisfying to find new ways to catch light.
1.Fine art prints on paper with hand touched gloss elements.
Giclee print | ENCODE: THRIVE on 100% archival cotton rag c Heather Hancock 2021
encode: THRIVE 8”x8” print on 100% archival cotton rag c Heather Hancock 2021
2. Digital prints on translucent film.
After my tests with printing on vellum revealed the need to find moisture resistant papers, I got some translucent screen printing film. This is super versatile material that allows light to pass through the prints. Backlit prints glow, kinda like glass + light.
Digital print | ENCODE: CHILL on translucent film 8”x8” c Heather Hancock 2021
3. Digital prints on aluminum.
I tried printing on a number of more permanent, rigid substrates: acrylic, wood and brushed aluminum. My favorite by far was using reveals of the brushed aluminum to shimmer and catch light, much like glass functions in my original art pieces. These are light and easily hung. Working digitally gives endless flexibility with creating sets and series of work in target colorways. Super exciting.
Digital print | ENCODE: GO on brushed aluminum 12”x12” c Heather Hancock 2021
Digital print | ENCODE: GO on brushed aluminum 12”x12” c Heather Hancock 2021
Feature on Redfin blog
Color Your Home! 12 Glass Artwork Ideas to Brighten Your Space
July 15, 2021 by Alison Bentley Updated on July 19th, 2021
Summertime is in full swing, which means it’s time to draw all your curtains or blinds and let sunshine into your home. To fully embrace the light your home has to offer and create a truly unique space, look no further than glass artwork. Incorporating glass artwork to your home can create a kaleidoscope of colors, whether that’s adding a stained glass window or a centerpiece to your dining room table.
Reflect: Beam 5’x3’ hand cut glass + concrete c Heather Hancock
We’ve reached out to glass artists from Minneapolis, MN to Vancouver, CA for their expert advice on bringing glass artwork into your home. Check out what they had to say so you can embrace a rainbow of colors into your space.
Photo courtesy of Apperlo Art
Architectural glass can enrich the character of any building, always adding style and charm to a home. Its translucent and transparent qualities make it a useful and elegant element for windows, entryways, doors, exterior, and interior walls, swimming pools, and skylights. – Mila Apperlo, Abstract Artist at Apperlo Art
Any glass art piece is special and unique. If you want a “soft” look choose clear and pastel colored glass with texture. It will shoot patterns and maybe rainbows on your wall with the right light. If you want rich jewel-like colors, make sure you have bright light during a good portion of the day. Ask the artisan to “hide” a delightful little detail into the design. It will become such a special discovery item and a delightful conversation piece. – Christina Amri, Amri Studio Inc.
Photo courtesy of gusto! design studio
Glasswork can make an impact without color. We have used art glass as a way to bring historic interest and texture into a space. Lead came glasswork panels don’t have to be colorful to be beautiful. In our case, using a window with beveled and textured glass can give a bathroom remodel some elegant historic charm while maintaining that restrained monochromatic palette. – Geno Salimena, gusto! design studio
Think about textured clear glass. When choosing stained glass many think of colorful church windows, but custom home builders today have begun incorporating clear textured glass instead of colors to add more character to the home without getting too busy. Glass gives you the option to add beauty to form and function, adding modern charm to any room in the home. Whether it’s frameless fire-molded showers, an antique mirror backsplash, or environmentally-friendly recycled glass countertops, there are an infinite number of options to add luster and elegance to your home. – Andrew LeJeune, Glass Art Design
Photo courtesy of Lucy Chamberlain
Keep these 3 things in mind when placing a glass art piece. 1) Lighting and perspective. Because of its translucency, glass art changes dramatically depending on how it’s lit. And, a piece viewed tabletop, will also have a completely different look when in a niche 7 feet from the ground. 2) A room has a feeling, an energy created by what it contains. All art needs to relate well to other art pieces. This can mean harmonizing, or dramatically contrasting. 3) Every art piece needs room to breathe. The more room, the more central to being viewed. – Lucy Chamberlain
Photo courtesy of Stone and Glass
Color is key. Understand the colors you respond to and use them to have a party. Remember that the magic of glass is color. The more color and the more light illuminating that color, the more the magic becomes part of your life. Color, color, color will make you happy. – James Stone owner and lead artist at Stone and Glass
Photo courtesy of The Glass Studio
Collect pieces that unite your style. The first thing to do is become a collector, whether it be contemporary glass, vintage pieces, or a combination of both. Look for wall art, vases, bowls, plates, drinking glasses, that can be color coordinated or maybe thematic. Tableware is another wonderful way to bring beautiful glass into your home, where you can share meals on gorgeous handmade glass. – Cathi Milligan, The Glass Studio
Glass art is all about lighting. In order to reap the rewards of your glass art, consider how you will light your piece. This is true for both architectural or sculptural glass. Spiro Lyon Glass creates one of a kind cast glass panels that allow 90% of the light to pass through the glass, yet the thickness of the panel offers privacy to the space. – Jacqueline Spiro Balderson, Spiro Lyon Glass
Photo courtesy of Heather Hancock Studio
Glass catches light like no other material making for an endlessly changing visual element in your space. Glass is unparalleled in its physical durability. Artwork with glass will never fade, so go bold and hang glass artwork in sunny spots where other artwork wouldn’t dare to go. Hang glass artwork at a 45° angle from a natural light source for maximum shimmer and sparkle. This same shimmer can be created with angled LED lighting. Use cool temperature bulbs to keep colors crisp. Hang glass artwork in a space you walk by – think entry wall, halls, stairwells, dining rooms. It’ll catch your eye with a new shimmer every time you move by. – Heather Hancock, Heather Hancock Studio
urban vine | 8’x2.5’ hand cut glass + concrete c Heather Hancock
Glass art ties a room together. Properly placed in the corner by a window or beneath a track light, translucent glass sculptures accent nearby upholstery, while also displaying in shadow rings of colorful light on an adjacent wall space or flooring, creating a secondary, near “pop-up” art display. Glass sculptures provide the weightiness of filling an empty corner with the heaviness of blocking the flow of energy in a room. As a sculptural form, being translucent and light-flowing, or opaque and textural, glass forms move both light and energy in a room, while also counterbalancing more stationary objects like furniture, especially those sculptures referencing the bendable and organic lines often found in nature. – Melissa Ayotte, Ayotte Glass Studio
Photo courtesy of epiphany glass studio
Art has the innate ability to transform the space it is in. Whether enriching an existing color palette by incorporating a vibrant pop of color from a unique hand-blown glass vessel, or playing with how the light interacts with the colors of a delicate, hand-blown sculpture and the room throughout the day are excellent examples of using glass to create a bold statement and bring an elegant balance to your space. – April Wagner, Owner of epiphany glass studio
Think out of the box for color pop, window shelf or table by window can be the best place for the light to change and enhance the colors in blown glass throughout the changing light all day. Think of some colors that are bright and different from your home’s interior, maybe even some garden art in front of a window that looks great from inside and out. – Mark & Marcus Ellinger, Glass Quest Studio
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Alison Bentley
Alison is part of the content marketing team and enjoys writing about real estate trends and home interior design ideas. Her dream home is a cottage-style house with a chef's kitchen and a cozy room to store and play vinyl records.
print format update
Quick print format update.
Vellum print testing revealed that moisture in the air wrinkles the prints. I didn’t discover this until this spring’s midwest drought ended with a very showery end of June and early July!
Next up: transparency film. Also lets light pass through for a glowing effect with backlighting. Without, it almost looks like a metal print.
Loving these. Testing underway.
new print format
Over the past few months I’ve been exploring digital prints and how they can be part of my creative practice. There’s a clarity and precision that I love and am always striving for in my work with glass and concrete. Working digitally eliminates the complicated process of transforming precision ideas into imprecise materials. This gives me complete freedom to explore layering and contrast and light transmission.
I have always loved drawing and printing on vellum. The floaty, soft quality to these vellum prints as light is transmitted through that is a satisfying contrast to the precision line compositions. The prints transform completely in different lighting conditions. Daylight or backlit, they glow. Low light and the saturated color and grays are darkened and focused.
testing vellum prints | Encode BE summer series c Heather Hancock 2021
testing vellum prints | Encode BE summer series c Heather Hancock 2021
testing vellum prints | Encode BE summer series c Heather Hancock 2021
More on these as I continue developing the ENCODE summer series BE.
summer palette and inspo
I’ve been starting developing compositions for the next group of ENCODE pieces. Lake imagery and palettes are taking over from the popping pink and orange and greens from spring drawing.
sketching | ENCODE: BE summer series c Heather Hancock 2021
ENCODE palette planning
I’m developing new work in the ENCODE series. I have been exploring in completely divergent ways for the past year: taking an idea and seeing how many different compositions I can find. I’m ready to start thinking about multiple pieces and how pieces can interact in coherent hangings.
encode | GO/GROW WIP each 20”x20” glass + sanded texture c Heather Hancock 2021
This is letting me do two contradictory things: do less in each piece…and use additional forms of encoded information in individual panels. ENCODE evolved from another series SCAN where vertically streaming text elements offered a beautiful text based composition. For pieces in ENCODE series I’ve been using a single word or idea and exploring compositions with many fewer elements. I have been wanting to bring the vertical “SCAN” text elements into ENCODE as another way to create beauty from structure of encoded content.
Thinking about multi piece hangings creates space for different things to happen in each panel, all encoding go/grow/bloom in different ways.
The goal is to fully integrate across the groupings using several different techniques and elements including: hand cut glass inlays, textured background, etching, stringer fine lines, hardware insets and acrylic paint. I am holding off painting these new panels. I need to think about how color is working in these pieces.
So many directions to go with—or without—color. I do love this elemental raw textured silver. The strong matte / gloss contrast has always been so important in my work. More experimentation underway.
new formats
I am enjoying experimenting with new formats for my work this year. I’ve kinda had a mental barrier to translating my work into other formats. Part of the challenge is that I see the ‘objectness’ of my art as being central to its impact. I find it endlessly fascinating to see the cut glass elements and understand it as an object with dimension albeit only 3mm worth.
My first foray into fine art prints working with Fine Art printer Paul Lane yielded lovely high resolution prints on Hahnemuhle bright white archival cotton rag paper. The textures and shine translated incredibly beautifully onto cotton paper and started my art print subscription offering.
Another approach I am now also considering is working straight from digital files. I start with rough sketching but then transition to digital format to get the precision line and form that interests me.
I have been reluctant to share these digital drawings. I guess because they’re not in object form. But as I’m experimenting with different formats I realize that there are other important aspects of my work that can be highlighted with digital prints.
Printing on vellum is something I have always loved. And I think it’s because they create this luminescent quality. Literally glow with backlighting. So a whole new way to play with light.
series sketching printing on vellum c Heather Hancock 2021
This creates such a lovely light glowing print.
encode test print on vellum c Heather Hancock 2021
Another completely different format approach is printing on raw aluminum. Letting raw aluminum reflect light and shimmer as substitute for glass. With a matte finish I think there is good potential for this to be an option for a more permanent format. I would love to see screen printed or hand painted elements added to create additional texture. And, this is another interesting new way to interact with light.
test print on aluminum c Heather Hancock 2021
test print on aluminum c Heather Hancock 2021
Nature in City; City in Nature
in Fine Art, Nature Art
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.
”
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.