Hannah Taylor Installation

Stretched Through the Frame : an Installation by Hannah Taylor

Exhibition Artist Statement:

I return to the intersections of survival, endurance, and playfulness within my surrounding ecosystems of Summit County, Colorado. I witness how the lines within landscapes hold memory: in tree lines, water levels, or cracking branches. I sew, draw, collect, and record with red thread to quietly interrupt the ways in which we separate ourselves from the natural world, and to reintroduce myself to the visual evidence of an ecosystem, getting to know and then letting go of ideas of escape or infiltration. My human reliance on and impact within the natural world seeps beyond the architecture of the town I live in; it spills out of the constructed reservoir, into the composition of snowpack, and through the invasive species scattered along the roadside.

Within my surrounding ecosystems, I often cross paths with resilience and playfulness; lodgepole pine needles are covered with a protective waxy coating while dried aspen leaves curl curiously around each other. I track my conversations with the enduring liveliness in these materials using red thread.

Red demands attention in both human and non-human environments: stop signs, flashing alarm signals, or poisonous insects. This color is indifferent to our perceptions of what is natural; our brains are drawn to red in any environment. I return to outdoor spaces that appear untouched by humans but are in fact entirely shaped by our care: reservoirs or thinned forests for example. I bring this door to these places to ask, when do we decide that we are entering nature? How do we curate the experience of “being in the wilderness”? What do we ask for from these places when we step inside this outdoor world?

Short Artist Bio:

Hannah Taylor is a Colorado-based visual artist who uses red thread to amplify existing dialogue between human and landscape. She returns to the cross sections of perseverance and playfulness that are essential to ecological and human adaptability. Taylor holds a BA in Studio Art from Grinnell College and is a current Colorado Art Science Environment Fellow through the University of Colorado Boulder. She has exhibited work throughout Colorado, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Taylor currently lives and works in Summit County, Colorado.