Hannah O’Hare Bennett creates one-of-a-kind art using handmade paper, beads, yarns, fabrics, and other fibers. Don’t be surprised if you also find natural materials that caught her interest.
How did you find yourself on an artist’s path? Always there? Lightbulb moment? Dragged kicking and screaming? Evolving?
I’ve always wanted to be an artist. My mom says I’ve “always been like this.”
I did have some long detours mostly because I wasn’t confident in my abilities, and because I grew up in a rural community where practicality was an important value. And I do value practicality! It’s just that by my nature, I approach most things like they are art projects, and that’s not a great way to work on someone else’s farm, or produce department, which were the other things I did before I finally went back to graduate school in my late 30s.
Now that I’ve gotten here, I feel like this is what I was always supposed to be doing, but without the detour, I don’t know what I’d actually be making art about, so I’ll never regret that.
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What different creative media do you use in your work?
I use handmade paper, seed beads, all kinds of yarns, fabrics and other fibers. Sometimes I collect natural materials that catch my interest.
Do you plan your work out ahead of time, or do you just dive in with your materials and start playing?
It’s really a combination. I make lots of samples to see how materials will work together, but when I’m working on my larger pieces, I often only know one or two elements that will definitely be included. There’s a lot of improvisation. Sometimes, I will make something big, finish it, and then do studies based on that piece to further refine the ideas.
Describe your creative space.
Right now I have a studio in an art center in Madison Wisconsin called Arts + Literature Laboratory. It felt big when I moved in but I’ve managed to fill it up with equipment and materials.
Handpapermaking takes three large pieces of equipment, a beater, a press and a drybox. Plus, I have a large amount of fibers to process that people have given me, and that takes up a ton of room. It’s really cozy.
Working across many different media, how do you organize all of your creative supplies?
I’m not very good at that. Most people would be totally horrified by the chaos in my studio.
How often do you start a new project? Do you work actively on more than one project at a time?
I’ve been doing these big combination paper/bead/weaving tapestries based on old photos, and I usually have three going at the same time. I also usually have lots of smaller pieces, or sometimes someone asks me to do a dye project or teach a technique which means that I have to prepare samples.
Are you a “finisher”? How many UFOs do you think you have?
I am a finisher, but sometimes it takes me a year to get back to something.
I probably have about 10 UFOs–I just pulled out a card weaving project I started in the summer because I need a new belt. Generally, I find that I will get to a point with work and not know what to do next. Instead of forcing it, the best thing for me to do is to put it aside, but not forget about it. Usually, I figure out what to do while I’m working on the next thing.
Which part of the design process is your favorite? Which part is a challenge for you?
Right now, I love figuring out different bead weaving patterns–I get most of my beads from thrift stores and donations, so they are all different sizes, shapes and colors. Getting them to fit together into something beautiful and meaningful is a puzzle, and I love it.
Is there an overarching theme that connects all of your work?
Language and communication seem to be themes that reoccur, without me consciously realizing it.
My current body of work is all about living in Ecuador, where I learned to speak Spanish. The images in the work come in and out of focus, which was a lot like how it felt to live in a place where I wasn’t sure about a lot of what was going on around me.
I’ve also had shows in the past where I thought of the work as parts of speech. For a while, I was doing installations of objects laid out in horizontal line, and I thought of them as sentences. I think this is because I was such a voracious reader when I was growing up.
Relationships to land are also a big theme. I grew up on a farm, and that will really instill a sensibility around weather, materiality, and craftmanship–you have to do things well and pay attention to what is happening if you want your farm to function. There’s so much to notice in the natural/agricultural world. I do a lot of reading about ethnobotany and the origins of agriculture, and I’ve made several bodies of work related to those themes.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?
My professor in undergrad, Cima Katz, told me many times that it was okay and not a tragedy if I never made art again after I graduated. I will always be grateful to her for removing that pressure from me. I went off into the world and did many things before coming back to art. Fifteen years after I graduated, she wrote me a recommendation letter for graduate school. And she’s been following my career since then, and been so encouraging.
What do you do to keep yourself motivated and interested in your work?
This is just a given. I don’t ever struggle with this, and in fact it really annoys me sometimes that I have to have a job so I can have health insurance. I know exactly what I want to be doing, I’m good at it and if it doesn’t help anyone else, at least it doesn’t hurt anyone.
Instead of being able to focus entirely on my studio work, creative research, teaching workshops and some projects I want to do in Ecuador, I have to have a job that takes up a lot of time and energy.
Where can people see your work?
On Instagram: hannahoharebennettstudio or my website http://www.hannahoharebennett.com. I also have a newsletter where I publish announcements about teaching and exhibitions: www.philyra.substack.com
Interview posted January 2025
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