Untitled (225, 229, 146)

Label

In an otherworldly landscape, which Hammond describes as “kind of a cross between the moon and mars,” three seemingly unrelated objects coexist: a clown figure, an igloo, and a log cabin. Identified by numbers (#225, #229, and #146) these are three of 276 individual images which Hammond collected from a wide variety of printed sources and reproduced in various combinations using a limited palette of six colors. Each time she chose different images, the new combination created a new or alternative narrative.

This was a theoretical approach at a time when the art world discouraged any autobiographical or narrative content. Still traces of Hammond herself appear. She describes the clown figure as an artist’s alter-ego, someone “who is engaged with creating another person whom they inhabit.” The igloo and log cabin are models, too small for shelter. Hammond describes them as “create[ing] another world inside of the lunar world.” The igloo and dog sled may be a trace of the two childhood years Hammond spent in Alaska. The painting can be read in one way as the results of an impersonal artistic system and in another as an expression of the artist’s process of creating worlds and identities within worlds.

From the 2019 exhibition The Expanding Universe of Postwar Art, curated by John R. Stomberg Ph.D, Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director

Course History

WRIT 2.07, WRIT 3.01, Exposition and Composition, Erikki Mackey, Fall 2022

Exhibition History

Luise and Morton Kaish Gallery Stairway, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 25, 2019-February 23, 2020.

The Expanding Universe of Postwar Art, Northeast Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 10-August 15, 2019.

Provenance

The artist; sold to Oscar H. and Barbara Feldman, Lincolnshire, Illinois, 1991; given to present collection, 2019.

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Subjects