I create imaginary landscapes and architectural growths to investigate the effects of entropy on our environment. I transform commonplace materials like ceramic, paper, and wire into unfamiliar forms and textures that evoke growth, decay, and the tenuousness of our surroundings. Through the visual and tactile language of craft, my work addresses aspects of physical existence on the edge of potential destruction. The physical and connotative properties of these materials speak of the possibility of their demise: porcelain lattices defy their structural improbability to reflect their fragility back on the viewer; a wrinkled, skin-like coating of paper is stained and slowly decayed by the rusting of the steel wire skeleton that supports it.
Combined with this materiality, the large-scale format of my installation work requests the physical and spatial consideration of the viewer when interacting with it. The visibility of decay in the rust-stained and peeling paper and the ostentatious fragility of the porcelain implicate human interaction as a source of potential destruction. By openly displaying their own physical vulnerabilities, these objects call on the viewer to examine the entropic nature of their own human body and its relationship to its surroundings. In doing so, my works aims to cultivate compassion for the physical world around us and for our own ephemeral bodies.
Artist Biography
Hanna Vogel is an installation artist, writer, and teacher living and working in Philadelphia, PA. She received an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and a BFA from the California College of the Arts. She has shown her work nationally and internationally, and has presented at conferences and published papers internationally. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, Anderson Ranch, and the California College of the Arts, and will be a resident artist at Sculpture Space and at Furman University in 2018.
Education
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, MA MFA
California College of Arts, Oakland, CA BFA, Ceramics with High Distinction
Awards & Honors
2018 Artist-in-residence, Sculpture Space, Utica, NY
2017 Co-author "Installation Art and the Mobile Embodied Viewer", Yearbook of Moving Image Studies. Image Temporality: The Relation of Time, Space and Reception of Visual Media. Kiel, Germany. Research Group Moving Image Science
Professional Experience
2018 Instructor, Extreme Hand Building workshop, Furman University, Greenville, SC
