Biography & Artist Statement
Hannah Jordan is an artist from Cleveland, Ohio, who works primarily in collage and printmaking. She received a BFA in Drawing and Painting from the Ohio State University in 2021. Her work has been shown and sold in various galleries, including a solo exhibition at Skylab Gallery in 2024. During her time in Columbus, Hannah was also awarded a Greater Columbus Arts Council Funds for Artists Grant and completed a fellowship at Columbus Printed Arts Center. Hannah currently resides in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she is an MFA Printmaking Candidate at the University of Tennessee.
Adornment, patterned textiles, and non-masculine colors have historically devalued femininity and encouraged complacency in women. Drawing influence from the founding principles of the Pattern and Decoration Movement and artists such as Miriam Schapiro, I use color, pattern, and collage to celebrate feminine aesthetics and reclaim the relationship between decoration and femininity. Using imagery inspired by Western European canonical representations of the female nude, I create collages that abstract the figure through repetition of form to dissolve the figure into the work. The female nude carries the weight of societal expectations, objectification, and its problematic history as an artistic subject. Through dispersion and camouflage, the female nude is freed of this burden, reaching a state of euphoria.
Imagery generated from the collages is then used to create printed works on paper that explore color relationships to expand the spectrum of feminine color. Colors are frequently associated with gender. Companies produce household products marketed for women in pink and lavender hues, nurseries of baby girls are clad in pink, and even male Modernist painters were evaluated as lesser for using pastel colors. By incorporating these traditionally feminine colors into complex palettes, I aim to challenge what constitutes feminine color. Additionally, the visual complexity, optical blending, and after-images produced by these palettes create an extra-sensory experience to encourage feelings of ecstasy in the viewer.
Femininity is not a universal experience; each individual who identifies as female holds a unique perception of femininity. Foundational elements of my feminine identity are incorporated into conversations of ornamentation in the work through the reproduction of patterns connected to my mother’s garments and home decor. My mother, a traditional stay-at-home mom who embodies the feminine archetype, shaped my view of femininity during my formative years. Additionally, the repetitive craft practice of pattern making mechanically relates to forms of “women’s work” such as tatting, knitting, or weaving. The repetitive actions also allow me to achieve a sense of bliss during the production of the work. Through repetition, color, and pattern, I collage the female nude to monumentalize my interpretation of femininity, honor the role of decoration in the history of feminine aesthetics, and create a state of euphoria for the figure, the viewer, and myself.