Daily Inspiration: Meet Hanna Newman

Today we’d like to introduce you to Hanna Newman.

Hi Hanna, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I am an interdisciplinary artist based in the Atlanta area. I’m originally from Minnesota, and moved to Atlanta in 2018 for grad school at Georgia State University where I got my MFA in ceramics in 2021. Since then I’ve been teaching, making work, and exhibiting throughout the region at venues including the Atlanta Contemporary, Whitespec at Whitespace, Columbia College in Columbia, South Carolina, Florida Atlanta University in Boca Raton, Florida and Art Conscious in New Orleans. I entered the art world through clay when I was 18ish, and have grown to embrace multiple mediums; photography, video, sound, sculpture, installation. Materials make sense to me, the tactile nature of working with my hands resonates with me more than language.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The roads most worth travelling never seem to be smooth. Struggles that I’ve encountered along the way range from rejection letters from grants, shows, fellowships to the ongoing struggle for more space to create work and funding for supplies. I think most artists can relate to this. Creating artwork requires vulnerability, which can be a struggle at times. Overall, my biggest complaint is that my studio isn’t the size of a warehouse. Other than that, I’m pretty fortunate to be where I’m at as an artist, as a professional, and as an individual.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a sculptor and installation artist. I work with ceramics, metal, resin, video, photography, and more to create life-size sculptures and installations. I think about myself as a moldmaker, as moldmaking plays a prominent role in my studio practice. I like to use rubber to take molds of myself, of other people and of the spaces I inhabit. I like barriers and moments of transition, like belly buttons and doorways and bathtub drains. The casts that come from these molds vary in material, sometimes metal, sometimes clay, sometimes resin. These casts become fragments that I join together or with other materials and objects to create figures and spaces. I think about these casts of the body and of spaces as being similar to photography. With moldmaking, I can focus in on a gesture, a pose, an outlet or switch, and I can crop out the rest of the world much like photography does. Like photographs, these casts are direct impressions that carry the essence, or the memory, of the original object. Each casts replaces the memory it aimed to preserve.

So looking at my work, you see fragments of people, of domestic spaces, of objects, that are joined together to create installations and new figures. I’m particularly interested in using fragments because they can simultaneously suggest presence and absence, they can invoke the feeling of something both coming together and falling apart. I like that these fragments suggest this in-between space.

Throughout my childhood and adult life I encountered ongoing sleep disorders/issues such as insomnia, sleepwalking/talking, and sleep paralysis. These experiences launched my interest into the unconscious mind and the relationship between consciousness and unconsciousness. Sleep paralysis, in particular, both spooked and inspired me. Sleep paralysis is a mixed state of consciousness that occurs at the onset or offset of sleep. In this state, one hallucinates their surroundings. I think these experiences, though frightening, inspired my drive to create work that felt liminal, in-between two spaces. I like when my work exhibits both familiarity and strangeness. It can feel uncanny. I don’t think of my work as being about sleep issues, but rather I think about it as being about a transitioning between spaces, embracing the multiplicity of the self and exploring the relationship between interiority and exteriority.

My sculptures and installations exist in this in-between state, where the familiar becomes uncanny and the physical becomes psychological. They give form to emotional and mental states, such as longing, tenderness, grief, becoming, thus making visible what is usually internal.

Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
Stay out of your own way. Experiment. Play. Learn from others.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.hannasculpture.com
• Instagram: @hanna.sculpture