Hannah O'Hare Bennett

I have been haunted by the story of Nikolai Vavilov, a Russian scientist and plant breeder who traveled the world gathering seeds and plant specimens to create the first seedbank in the early part of the 20th century. Russia at that time was plagued with famine caused by failed grain crops. The seeds that farmers used were vulnerable to disease and drought, and Vavilov wanted to breed hardier varieties by crossing them with varieties from centers of biodiversity around the world. He was undermined in the end by the politics of Stalin, whose authoritarian regime did not value intellectualism and scientific methods. Vavilov died of starvation in prison. Over the next few years, I plan to develop an installation that memorializes his work, and the importance of biodiversity. During my residency at the Madison Bubbler, I made this display of objects, which serves as a sort of sculptural sketchbook to be developed into a more coherent installation. I welcome feedback, suggestions and collaborators.

The title, 200 Plants, comes from the rough number of crops mentioned in the Wikipedia article about centers of domestication. It’s as good a place as any to start: from what I read of Vavilov, the science would have been more important to preserve than his personal memory.

In May and June 2018, I was Artist in Residence at the Madison Public Library Bubbler. I took over the ground level art studio and turned it into a papermaking and general fiber arts studio, where I did my own work and held workshops and other public programs.

Domesticated: A Fiber Arts Studio inspired by a Wild World

Bigger, brighter, softer, piebald, cuter, tamer, sweeter, less spiny, more compact: these are some of the characteristics that plants and animals develop as they become domesticated by human beings. Think of the difference between your pet dog and a wolf.   During this residency, we will create works of art inspired by nature and domesticated nature. Objects will expand or shrink, grow harder or softer, explode outward or bind shut, become evenly patterned or patchy, spikier or smoother or more noticeable or more camoflaged.  A book will go feral, extending longer and longer over two months. Sewing pins will sprout strange vegetation and disperse across the walls, spreading like milkweed. We will make paper from plant material and old rags, learn embroidery patterns and then let them go wild, and much more.

The root word of domestication is domus, which means home or hearth.  This studio will reflect my own home, and I hope that visitors will be able to feel at home themselves.  Make a cup of tea, bring a book or a project and nestle in for the afternoon. Additionally, this residency will emphasize reusing and recycling materials, but also conscious decision making around when new materials are the best choice.  

Collaborative projects:

During the residency there were two ongoing collaborative projects.  

The Longest Book of the Shortest Stories

This is a very long coptic bound book.  We will be making paper during 6 different open studios to be used in this project.  I will cut it down to size (probably 8 x 4”) and prefold it. Visitors will be asked to take a sheet and write or draw or collage on it, and then leave it behind to be bound into an ever-growing book.  I’m planning on using different colors of bookbinding thread each day as a record of traffic through the space. (I also have plenty of paper to get us started.)

Dehiscence

This project is named after that tendency of wild plants to disperse seeds with no help from human hands--the most obvious example is milkweed.  Essentially, it’s an installation of customized pins poked into the wall across from the bubbler room. I have several insulation foam panels that I’m planning on covering with canvas and installing on the wall--I’ve used heavy duty velcro for this before, and that’s my suggestion for this as well, unless you have a different suggestions.  I want to use the foam because the pins will stay in better than if we just put them in the wall. I’m going to use regular sewing pins because they are far cheaper than the insect pins I use on the first floor.

I’ll have a collection of different fibers, paper bits and small objects for visitors to use to design a pin.  I’ll have them do it on a piece of paper, and then I’ll use paper pulp to attach it to the pin head. At the end of the residency, people could come back and try to find their  pin and take it home.

Open Studios:

Papermaking

Wednesdays starting May 9 6-8PM

Come and make paper to be used in one of the collaborative projects we’ll be making during May and June, The Longest Book of the Shortest Stories.  You’ll get wet and messy and learn how to turn fabric scraps and raw plant materials into sheets of paper to draw and write on.

On these nights you’ll also have a chance to work on a collage, draw one of the objects in the studio, and create a custom pin for the other collaborative project, Dehiscence.

Embroidery and Surface Design

Three dates TBD

Bring personal projects you have started and work alongside other visitors, or get help on a project you’re stuck on.  This is a great night for individuals who have attended one of the workshops to come and get extra input. We’ll also have some group projects to contribute your stitches to.  

Workshops for Preteens (ages 7-13)

Soft Sculpture

12 youth+adult caregivers for those under age 11

June 16, 9-12

Make a small stuffed creature of your own design, using recycled fabric.  We’ll start with a few drawing exercises and then move into designing a pattern and sewing.  Participants will leave with a completed or nearly completed stuffed animal. If possible, bring a small sewing kit and fabric--no need to buy new fabric if you have old clothes or other unused fabric laying around.  Please limit fabric to non-stretchy kinds! We’ll also have supplies available.

Adventures with Paper Pulp

12 youth+adult caregivers for those under age 11

May 26, 9-12

We’ll make sheets of paper with embedded threads and other inclusions, make string and paper drawings, and use premade plaster casts to make small sculptures.  This will be messy fun, and aprons and rubber boots are reccommended.

Workshops for Teens and Adults (ages 14 and up)

Domesticated Threads I: Embroidery

12 participants

May 7, 6:30-8:30

Come learn ten stitches, basic and not-so basic.  Then design a patch to decorate your backpack or jeans, or to incorporate into a project for the Domesticated Threads II workshop.  We’ll make a good start on the project, although it’s unlikely you’ll finish completely during the workshop. Please bring an embroidery hoop (8 inches is best, but whatever you have should work.) Embroidery thread, small scissors, your own fabric and other hand sewing equipment would also be useful.

Domesticated Threads II: Sewing Small Containers

12 participants

May 21 6:30-8:30

Learn how to design and sew a small fabric wallet, cell phone case, lined Japanese style lunch bag, pencil case or other container.  It’s nice to take the first Domesticated Threads workshop so that you can incorporate embroidery into this project but it’s absolutely not necessary.  If possible bring about a half yard of non stretchy fabric (could be from old clothes or other found fabric), thread, small scissor and other sewing equipment.  This workshop will include optional use of a sewing machine.

Sculpting with Handmade Paperpulp and String (3 day workshop)

10 participants

May 18 6-9PM(is this possible?), May 19 9AM-12PM and May 20 2-5 PM

This is a really special opportunity!  Over three days, participants will learn to use paperpulp to make 3-D woven sculptures.  We’ll experiment with natural pigments, and different kinds of strings. Each person will make at least one wall hanging and a number of smaller projects.  This is a messy process--wear old clothes, an apron and shoes that can get wet. Bring geometric drawings (for ideas), an open mind, and a snack.

Wild Threads I: Experimental Embroidery and Surface Design

12 Participants

May 15 6:30-8:30

In this workshop we are letting go of all preconceptions about what embroidery is.  We’ll use weird threads, incorporate found bits of things into work, and generally forget about neatness.  Please bring small objects (anything! Don’t just limit yourself to buttons and beads--surprise me with new ideas), threads, rope, any kind of wierd thing you think could be incorporated into a fabric.  Believe me, we can find a way to work with almost anything smaller than your palm. Also bring some fabric--a half yard of something substantial would be great. As with all workshops, a small sewing kit is awesome, but not required. This workshop is a great way to build on the Domesticated Threads workshops, but it also stands alone.

Wild Threads II: Making Soft Sculpture Patterns

12 participants

June 4 6:30-8:30

Bring an object made of a hard material that you’d like translate into a soft sculpture.  It could be a fork, a stone, a radio, a carrot...almost anything will work.

We’ll start class by looking at a few soft sculptures and the patterns used to make them, as well as some artists that use soft sculpture in their work. Then we’ll use a variety of techniques to make the patterns--tracing, drawing, simplifying shapes, using a copy machine.  Bring a sketchbook and an open mind!

Wild Threads III: Sewing and Embellishing Soft Sculpture

12 participants

June 11 6:30-8:30

In this workshop, we’ll work on completing the piece you made the pattern for in the Feral Threads II.  A sewing machine will be available (as well as some help using it.) We’ll also talk about a plan for embellishing your piece.

In May and June 2018, I was artist in Residence at the Madison Public Library Bubbler. I turned the studio space into a papermaking and fiber arts studio, where I taught workshops and worked on my own projects.

This work draws dual inspiration from fossils, which begin as soft bodied creatures and become shapes in rocks, and the material possibilities of fiber. Fiber is usually though of as being pliable and soft, but really, it can be almost as hard as ceramic, as evidenced by the sculptural work I have done with drained, over beaten bast fiber paper pulp.

Two kinds of books, one of which is almost not even a book. I was obviously more interested in the form than the content, or rather, the form was the content.

The word artifact has two definitions. One is “an object made by a human being, typically an item of cultural or historical interest,” and the second is “something observed in a scientific investigation or experiment that is not naturally present but occurs as a result of the preparative or investigative procedure.” Both definitions apply to the work shown in this exhibition. The objects you see are products of my investigations and experimentations with materials, in particular paper pulp. I have been relentless in trying new ways of using it--pushing it into plaster molds, shaping it with my hands, impregnating it with pigments, iron filings, and saw dust. It is like clay in that it is malleable, but unlike clay, it shrinks and warps as it dries. It can be restrained, but in that case, if it is a thick layer, it will often tear. Holes made intentionally and strategically will help prevent that. In the gallery, you will find artifacts from our domestic lives that may be returning to the wild: thorn-toothed combs, pins like plumed seeds in an embroidered storage case, grids that have warped and gone feral. Look once, and then look again, closer. 

This work is a poetic response to my preoccupation with what it means to be human and to interact with the natural world. In evolutionary biology, there is the concept of the domestication syndrome, the group of traits that wild plants and animals develop over long periods of time as they interact with humans and become tame. Think, for instance, of the difference between a wolf and a dachshund. Domesticated plants tend to have larger seeds with thinner seedcoats, diminished defense mechanisms like bitter-tasting compounds and thorns, indehiscent seed pods, and synchronized germination, all qualities that distinguish them from their wild relatives. Early agriculturalists selected plants that were easy to harvest and pleasant to eat, but part of that bargain meant that the plants were incapable of surviving without the protection and continued propagation humans provided. In turn, human societies have become ever more dependent on domesticated plants and animals. We are bound together in a balance that may be more delicate than we know.

The images in this Gallery are from a show in the Gelsey Verna Gallery in the Art Lofts Building on the University of Wisconsin Campus, Dec 13-19, 2016.

Domestic Origins

“…that’s what I live with, you know, these tangible small objects. I felt since I was a very small child that little inanimate things were very wise, that they had there was own kind of wisdom, something to teach me if I would pay the right kind of attention to them.”—Naomi Shihab Nye, in an interview with Bill Moyers in 1995

I am preoccupied by the way objects, ideas and stories begin, and the way that they change, especially under human influence.

For instance:

A hand is a kind of comb, in fact, it is the first comb, run through hair, or used to order threads while weaving.  What happens when you translate a comb into a soft form, and bend it?  What can it become? 

A shadow, drawn and sculpted becomes a wave or a landform. 

A bowl is a hill.

I’m not going to tell you every last part of the story.

Pollen was a solo show in the Art Lofts Gallery on the University of Wisconsin Madison Campus, August 6-12, 2016.

Artist Statement

It began with the cattails.  The grow abundantly in the marshy area near the lake, where I ride my bike almost every day.  In May I noticed the way the dead plants from last year wove together, almost like a mat or a basket. Then new green growth speared through the brown, and eventually, one day, I saw a green carrail emerging.  I dropped my bike and waded in to investigate and grabbed the carrel.  It released a cloud of pollen, which coated my hand.  I brushed it off on my jeans and then the pollen was there, too.

I kept watchin the cattails.  They changed and now are a soft furry brown in long, shiny green leaves and stalks.  When it freezes, they will fade to grayish and begin to shed.

I am thinking of ideas as a kind of pollen.  You take one thing, some small thing that appeals to you for some reason--a rusty grate, for instance.  And you think about ways you can change it, ways that you could make it important and noticeable.  And maybe there's some other thing that you see one day, like a pin cushion with an assortment of pins in it.  Is there a way to blend them?  

What is heare are the ways I found to blend and change ideas and materials.

Someone else would find a different way.