hanna washburn

Hanna Washburn’s soft and bulbous forms, made of recycled textiles and the occasional found object, are just barely holding themselves together. In this conversation, we discuss her introduction to textiles, searching for narrative, and incorporating ceramics. Born in Massachusetts, she now resides in Beacon, New York.

I hope you enjoy our conversation. It has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Artist portrait and artwork photos courtesy of the artist

Let’s start by introducing your practice.

I’ve always felt connected to textiles as a material. As something that is present around us. Something that we have in our homes, that we wear, that we are wrapped in when we are born. This thing that is integral to everyday life, and particularly the home. It’s a material that’s so personal to me, something that is connected to my childhood and my family. It has made so much sense to me to communicate through them.

Are these mainly recycled textiles?

Yeah, a lot of them are things from my own life or lives of people close to me—clothing, bedsheets, curtains, towels, things like that. The wonderful thing is that you are using objects that already exist, that already have a life. That also creates a certain limitation that I find inspiring, like sometimes, all the fabric that I have is one color. I have to be able to change how I’m thinking of something as I’m making it, and if I just don't have the thing I need, I have to find another road through. It keeps things open for me.

What did it look like when you first started incorporating textiles into your practice?

I began by sewing on top of photographs or drawings or prints that I’d done. It started very early as more of a line-based introduction, sewing both by hand and by machine. It wasn’t until I was in graduate school that I started to think about using fabric in a more compositional way.

But the idea of using a found material and an intimate material to create a composition and to give new life to this material was really exciting to me. It started from this place that was more front-facing and painterly, but still this idea of combining and stitching was always important. The first thing that I made was I sewed a bunch of old socks together, and then stretched them over stretcher bars, like a painting. I was totally excited about that.

Gradually it has become more sculptural. I started to stuff elements, or have elements coming off the wall and into the space. They started to take on their own space and their own posture.

You’ve mentioned that you were initially taught by your family. Was it taught to be more of a practical skill?

Sewing was one of those things that I learned to do alongside learning how to do everything else. But it was something that I really took to. It wasn’t just textiles, even though I loved sewing, I also loved friendship bracelets and making lanyards at camp or with friends. This feeling of making and sharing techniques with other people. And just having busy hands all the time.

Do you work now with hand-sewing or machine-sewing?

When starting a new piece, I sometimes use the machine to get some broad compositional thoughts together, which allows me to see the work take form. But I always go back over everything by hand. This really helps tighten things up and allows me to add new elements as I’m going. The stitch is also a really important marker of my hand and the visual aspect of bringing these disparate pieces together. So it is a pretty time-intensive process but it also allows me to spend time with the work and build a relationship with it.

Do you conceive of the entire form before starting?

One of the things about sewing, it’s such an additive process. Even works that I’ve already exhibited, or that I might consider to be finished in a certain sense, I’ll sometimes come back to them because I can always add more.

Because they’re abstract forms, it’s not like you’re trying to achieve something particularly recognizable. Do you ever consider them finished?

At a certain point, you have to take a picture, you exhibit it, you give it a title. But I don’t really subscribe to the idea of things being done; our lives are always changing. I’m interested in the idea of change, even as I’m making the work. Sometimes I exhibit them and then I bring them back in here and I’m like, you know what, I want to change this part, or even I’ll break down certain works into pieces and build them into something new, or Frankenstein them together with something else. Certain works maybe speak to a certain moment in my life that I don’t necessarily want to go back in and change. Other times, if I don’t feel connected to a certain idea anymore, I want to change it. Or I see the work differently than I did before. That’s one of the nice things about being an artist, I can change it if I want to. It feels empowering.

It sounds like a lot of your art is coming into being through the act of making.

The making is maybe my biggest research project. Thinking through the making. I tend to be pretty prolific but then I make a lot of things that I think are bad or not where I want them to end up. For me that’s okay because I don’t feel super precious about the work.

Once you’re selecting from within the available fabrics, can you explain your thinking?

Every work to me has a certain color palette that I’m thinking about, but there’s usually moments that I disrupt it. I’m really interested in using patterns and colors that you might not think of going together, like this idea of clashing or of them going together in a surprising way. It speaks to how many things we can all contain. I like to use patterns, particularly floral patterns, because of the ostensible femininity of them and using them to make these unruly forms. The connection of these modest patterns to the home, to make it slightly unsettling at times but also still comforting. There’s this undeniable comfort that you get from something soft and squishy that I'm interested in both engaging with and also trying to complicate.

You work in a medium that has many fraught notions about feminine work or the domestic sphere, do you encounter that in conversations around your work?

Once your art is out in the world, you can’t control how it’s perceived or talked about. I think every artist experiences situations where you overhear somebody say something that unsettles you. I am trying to let go of that a little bit.

There are a lot of conversations popping up these days about how textiles are “having a moment”—although really, it’s been around forever. There are so many artists working with textiles, in so many different ways, showing how they can be used so effectively and thoughtfully for storytelling and for creating. There’s such a capacity for different kinds of narratives and textures.

Even though I went to art school, I didn’t really learn any textile techniques there. I learned them all at home, from my mother, my grandmother, my great grandmother. So it’s a thing that I inherited outside of the institution, which also feels extra powerful to me. I see it as something that really strengthens the work.

Can we talk about the works that combine other materials?

Oh yeah, the ceramics. I started to think, as I was spending so much time at home during the pandemic, about objects in our lives and the intimacy of something that you can hold and that you either display on a shelf or that you use in a functional way. Also something that was exciting to me was that it was so different from fiber but I still felt like I could communicate with it. There’s this push and pull that happens with this really hard material and this really soft material that I felt really excited by. Ceramic also feels bodily to me.

The ceramics feel as if they are trying to contain the textile form. One piece looks like a ribcage, one is like a basket. I see a similar impulse in both the ceramics and the textiles to try to hold something in. It’s echoed in the hand-stitching, which makes the bulbous work look like it’s bursting at the seams.

100%. There’s something about being held in, or something breaking free of its constraint that feels very fundamental to me. That also feels related to my experience as a person, as well as the history of clothing and corsets or things in the home that feel confining. Experiences that feel confining. That is a thing we all experience and is something that you feel in your body, whether or not it’s literal or just a feeling.

Besides ceramics, some of your works incorporate furniture too.

Functionality is a question that I think about a lot, especially because I’m using these things—linens, clothing, furniture—that were once “functional” and giving them this new life. I want them to feel like they’re autonomous, not just a thing for your comfort. Maybe you used to sit on it, but it has its own identity. In a practical way, I started to use furniture when I wanted to make fiber sculptures that weren’t on the wall anymore. I started by just making soft sculptures that would lay on the floor. But I wanted them to be able to stand, or have some sort of posture. It made sense that they would use furniture or some domestic or found element to give them that posture.

A lot of the language we use to describe these things is so anthropomorphic. Just the idea of furniture having legs, we have legs. Sometimes I’ll see things in my home and I think of them as having certain personalities.

Some works feel more like bodies and others more like objects. Does that distinction matter to you?

I don’t really distinguish. That’s part of what I’m interested in, breaking down boundaries between bodies and creatures and our environments, to show that things are connected and that you don’t necessarily have to categorize something in a certain way.

Defying categorization, how do you create work that does that?

People often ask me, in regards to my work, “What is it?” Which is the question. . . but it’s also not really the question because it isn’t just one thing. People might have this urge to put something into a category, or see something and understand it and therefore dismiss it. I’m curious about what it means when you see something and you’re like, I don’t know what it is!

I’m intrigued by that ambiguity in your work.

My work is my way of trying to communicate some sort of feeling, experience, or a multitude of feelings and experiences. They’re a kind of allegory. I don’t want to tell you exactly what it is about, because then it loses some of the magic. They’re about me, but also about something larger. Going back to the idea of thinking through the making—I’m trying to reach towards something, and each work is an attempt to try to communicate something that is hard to say.

I can’t really write a story, that’s not my medium. I think that everyone finds their way of communicating. And some people have multiple. But this is mine. I’m still figuring it out. I think it’s still figuring itself out.

Part of this interview series is that I’m asking each artist to direct me to the next. So, who is an artist working today that you are intrigued by, and what is it about their practice you’re intrigued by?

I’ve known Abby Cheney for a long time; we went to school together. It’s been a great joy to see her work change and develop, and also as I’ve been figuring out my own practice. She mainly works with recycled cardboard and paper pulp to make both free-standing and wall-based works. Her practice has this precarity and humor that I find really inspiring and engaging. She’s able to use humor both to disarm the viewer and as a way of inviting the viewer into something that’s more contemplative or more serious.

Published January 7, 2024