August 3 – October 12, 2014
In 1973, the first major Pop Art Auction took place in New York at Parker Bernet, the Robert and Ethel Scull collection. As Assistant Director of Dayton’s Gallery 12, I was there with John Stoller, the Gallery Director, and we purchased two works: a Rauschenberg painting and a John Chamberlin sculpture.
Flash ahead forty years, I’m living in a Toyota camper and attaching glass beads to brain-tanned deer hide. Life can be strange. The technique I use, called “Lazy Stitch” by the Lakota, consists of beads layed down in rows of seven and is a very limited geometric form language. There is only one diagonal that forms a solid line. Other than that, you have a 90-degree angle and that’s about it. Though it is a limited language, that is what interests me about this medium. It is basic, like the twelve-bar form in music which, though likewise limited, gave birth to blues, country and rock and roll. It is seemingly inexhaustible whether used by Muddy Waters, Hank Williams, Ornette Coleman or Philip Glass. The challenge is what you can do with so little.
When I think of where my work will go, I do not think in terms of decisions I will be making, rather I think in terms of improving the decision-making process.
Installation Images
Glen Hanson, For George M (Morrison Horizon), 1997.
Glass Beads on Brain-Tanned Deer Hide, 6 x 11.
Glen Hansen, Chevron, 1997.
Glass Beads on Brain-Tanned Deer Hide.