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click on any image to enlarge:
FAMILY SECRET/SECRET FAMILY, 2004-2005
Digital inkjet prints on archival paper with acrylic paint,
horsehair, Jade glue, on rice paper
28 x 25.5 x 2 inches
Edition of 2
$7,000.
"...in the piece Denomino Duplex (Literally, Naming and Doubleness) I made butterflies and gave them two part Latin names. The piece is a kind of visual poem. All the names are fictional—I have made them up. And on the backside of the piece, with its glossary, you see the poetic association with each butterfly. A black butterfly with white spots might be named, for instance, "Crow" and "String of Pearls."
The piece "Family Secret/Secret Family" again uses butterflies. In fact, a comparison of the butterfly maps, Denomino Duplex and this piece could show a person how the same image could have three completely different meanings depending on how it is used in each piece. Each half of this piece consists of a kind of family tree study of eye-color representing two families in which two parents of differing eye colors each have four children of their resulting eye color." —Jane Hammond, 2007
"Painting is a cross between high philosophy and cement work. My biggest way of relating to this concept of time and labor is that it is an entry point for reaching the unconscious. The layers of paint have more to do with duration than texture. I see it as a function of time, like the idea of chanting. Certain things can begin to happen because you're with the painting for long periods of time." —Jane Hammond
The works on paper by Hammond are a complex combination of acrylic and gouache paint, graphite drawing, rubber stampings, color copier transfers, transfers from magazine illustrations and fruit labels, linoleum block printings, and ink drawings. Hammond derives her images from a multitude of interests including phrenology, astrology, knot diagrams, magic tricks, medical and technical illustrations and shadow puppets to name just a few. The combination of these disparate images depicted in such a variety of media gives Hammond's works on rice paper a wonderfully rich feel.
The artist's unique works on paper begin with stacks of various cutouts, Xeroxes and stampings from which she chooses appealing images to start gluing and layering. As she works, all the seemingly dissimilar elements begin to trigger associations with other images or ideas for the artist, which she continues to develop using the transfers, prints, paint and ink. This deliberate degree of suggestion carries through in her paintings as well, allowing the viewer opportunity to connect these images by drawing on their own interests and associations. Hammond uses a hermetic lexicon of messages and images, investing her paintings with complicated but unspecific meanings.
Since Hammond's last solo exhibition in New York and Seattle, she has had solo exhibitions of her work in galleries in Sweden, Spain, Detroit and Seattle. Her museum exhibition Jane Hammond: The Ashbery Collaboration traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH; Madison Art Center, WI; Blaffer Gallery, Houston, TX; and The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, HI from 2001 to 2003. The Whitney Museum of American Art presented a solo exhibition of her mural painting Backstage at the Whitney Altria in 2002, and the Weatherspoon Art Gallery of the University of North Carolina organized a solo exhibition of her paintings in 2003.
In 2004, she was an artist-in-residence at Dieu Donne Papermill, New York City. Hammond's New York representative is Galerie Lelong, where she had a one-person exhibition of paintings in the spring of 2005. A forthcoming survey of her works on paper is being organized by Mount Holyoke College Art Museum for 2006 and will then travel to the Achenbach Foundation in San Francisco, Harwood Museum in New Mexico, and others.
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