Exhibition Statement

In the Vernacular: People, Places and Things

Hannah O’Hare Bennett

I make work that is in the broadest sense about human relationships to the landscape. In this current body of multimedia tapestries, “People, Places and Things/Gente, Lugares, y Cosas,” the “landscape” is both a specific community in a particular region of the world and the internal emotional journey of a person who has purposely chosen to be a foreigner. It is inspired by my experience two decades ago when I lived in an Ecuadorian village for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer. Everything was disorienting when I first arrived–the mountainous landscape, the language, some aspects of the culture; there was no choice but to adjust, learn the language, and humble myself in the face of many missteps and mistakes.

In these tapestries, recognizable images emerge in some places and are obscured in others, materially expressing the moments of understanding that emerged as I gradually integrated into the community of Quillin, canton of Saraguro, province of Loja, population 60. By mending together disparate materials into something new and whole, I celebrate my memories of that time and the people who were a part of my life (and remain so now). One of the ways that my village neighbors and I built relationships was by doing manual work together, like shelling mountains of corn, making empanadas, spinning wool from the sheep. There is an echo of those repetitive, cumulative activities in many of the processes I use in my art. Ultimately, this work is about human connection to each other and to the landscape, both of which were an inescapable fact of village life.

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In June 2024, about 18 months after beginning People, Places and Things, I returned to Ecuador for the first time in twelve years. I had been somewhat anxious about this trip–it had been so long, my Spanish would certainly be rusty, and the news had been full of warnings about how dangerous Ecuador had become. As it turned out, my worries seemed silly as soon as I arrived at Ecuadorian customs. My Spanish was mostly still intact, and the agent I spoke to was warm and welcomed me back to the country, as did my taxi driver and the hotel. Over the next few days, I walked around the cities of Quito and Cuenca, and eventually tiny Quillin. I realized that, mostly unconsciously, my work has drawn inspiration not only from memories of interpersonal relationships and culture, but from the physical structures and objects that people make for themselves in locations that have been very meaningful to me. And therefore, the title of this exhibition is In the Vernacular, meaning local, natural, colloquial, domestic, functional, as opposed to formal, monumental, literary. Maybe that’s a paradox, since this work is most likely to be seen in a gallery, away from the daily lives of most people. But still, this is the work I am moved to create.

Definitions and Elucidations

Vernacular is a term most frequently used in reference to either language or architecture, and indeed those two things are very much a part of the inspiration for this work. But I would add a third category to that: craft. Here are a few words about each of these three applications of the term, hopefully this will shed light on the ways that I make the work in this exhibition.

Language

Twenty years ago I learned to speak in the vernacular of Southern Andean Ecuador, and any native Spanish speaker with knowledge of that country can immediately recognize that as soon as I start speaking. To me, that version of Spanish is the natural and ideal version of the language, clear and sweet, with some Kichwa words mixed in, making for an expressive way of speaking particular to the area around the town of Saraguro.

Architecture

In Ecuador, colonial architecture and perhaps the ghostly remains of pre-columbian structures merge with a melange of the more humble modern building styles, making for a sometimes incongruous effect that I love. Painted cement next to adobe next to stone, peeling layers of paper signs, painted political slogans or ads for agricultural chemicals. Roofs made of red tile, grates in different shapes of metal, ceramic tiles, linoleum. It all comes together in a collage of ordinary life.

Craft

I own three handwoven wool blankets made in Quillin. They are made entirely from the wool from flocks of sheep owned by the farmers there. That wool is hand spun, and then sent to the weavers in the village, who, for forty dollars, will weave a twill blanket that will cover a double bed. Simple, warm, and created entirely within that locale with no thought of selling to outsiders, this is a vernacular craft. As the economy changes, mostly likely this practice will die out, just as many others already have. But I think that we can learn something from people that make use of what comes from materials that are close at hand.

Upon further reflection, I think that one of the reasons I am drawn to the vernacular is because of the way that I was raised, on an organic farm in central Kansas, by people who had a similar kind of thrift and ingenuity with materials that my neighbors in Ecuador did. Maybe, after going to college, and some short stints in cities, settling into life in a remote mountain village reminded me of home in the flatlands. My dad constructing a greenhouse cover with the collected sheets of plastic he’d salvaged from packaging materials from his job really did have something in common with Doña Mariana repairing a plastic bucket by sewing the crack up the side together with twine.

This exhibition is made possible with support from a UW-Madison Division of the Arts Edna Wiechers Arts in Wisconsin Award, and a fellowship for the 2024 Winter Residency at Penland School of Craft. It is dedicated to the memory of Jim Belote, the first Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Saraguro, Ecuador from 1961-1963.

In the Vernacular: People Places and Things

Exhibition Statement

In the Vernacular: People, Places and Things