Hannah Howard's Projects

BFA Student

Major: Printmaking

Graduation Year: 2017

Artist Statement:

Brokenness is seldom considered anything more than to be fixed. We can acknowledge the brokenness all around us—our world, government, economy—yet we may find ourselves unsure of how to view our own. Kintsugi, an ancient Japanese technique, is used to repair broken vessels by using a mixture of lacquer and gold dust applied between the broken pieces. The use of precious metal to help hold together these pieces highlights the history of the vessel; it’s broken history is what makes it beautiful. This Eastern mentality of valuing the broken, highlighting its beauty, contrasts the Western desire to hide the broken.
Inspired by parables as tool to explain morals or spiritual truths, this body of work is the intersection of symbolism and spiritual journey; the outpouring of a desire to share with you what I seek to live.

Biography:

Hannah Howard is a New Hampshire-born artist, who studied Fine Art Printmaking with a minor concentration in Public Engagement at the Maine College of Art in Portland, ME. Working primarily in stone lithography, Hannah’s work is a melding of precision, physicality, and process, a combination used to produce work of excellent craft and conceptual exploration. Howard’s work as most recently explored parables, used to explain a moral or spiritual truths, by which her recent thesis body of work has been inspired. She seeks to share with the viewer her personal spiritual journey in an approachable, thought-provoking posture, by extending depiction of cracked earthen vessels as a sign of hope and beauty. The ancient Japanese tradition of kintsugi is a technique used to repair broken vessels by using a mixture of lacquer and gold dust. This Eastern mentality of valuing the broken, highlighting the beauty in brokenness and history, contrasts the Western desire to hide the broken. Howard seeks to share hope despite brokenness, allowing the cracks to reveal the treasure within.