Ann Hamilton (artist) facts for kids

Ann Hamilton is an American artist famous for her huge, multi-media art installations. These are like big art experiences that use many different types of art at once. She started making art in the early 1980s.

Ann first studied textile design, which is about creating patterns and designs for fabrics. She got her degree from the University of Kansas in 1979. After that, she lived in Canada for a while. Later, she decided to study sculpture at Yale University and earned another degree in 1985.

From 1985 to 1991, Ann taught art at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Since 2001, she has been a professor in the Art Department at Ohio State University. In 2011, she was named a special "Distinguished University Professor."

About Ann Hamilton

Ann Hamilton was born in Lima, Ohio. She went to St. Lawrence University before studying at the University of Kansas. She then earned her master's degree in sculpture from the Yale School of Art in 1985. Today, she lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her husband, Michael Mercil, who is also an artist.

What Inspires Her Art

Ann Hamilton in 2019

Even though Ann studied textile design, she chose to focus on sculpture for her advanced degree. She was interested in how different things relate to each other in a space. She felt that the connections between objects were more important than the objects themselves.

When she was in Canada and teaching, Ann started mixing different art forms. She combined textiles with photography and performance art. Her art often includes fabric, like pressed shirts or work uniforms, woven into images or installations.

Ann also sees herself as a "reader." She reads spaces, objects, poetry, and even dictionaries. Because of this, words, books, and the act of reading often appear in her art. Her work also explores big ideas about being human. These include gender, the body, feelings like suffering, and power.

As a conceptual artist, she uses video, sound, and interactive installations. This means that time, change, and even things falling apart are important parts of her work. Ann wants people to experience her art with all their senses. She often adds sounds and smells to her installations. This encourages viewers to connect with the art in a deeper way. Her artworks also often connect to the places where they are made. She uses objects that reflect the history and culture of that specific city or space.

Amazing Artworks

Early Works (1984–1990)

suitably positioned

This was one of Ann Hamilton's first big installations in 1984. It showed many of her artistic ideas. For this piece, she made a suit out of an old men's suit and toothpicks. She then stood wearing the suit in a studio. People could walk around her, but they didn't interact with her. This artwork connected the object (the suit) with the person (Ann herself).

body object series

While working on suitably positioned, Ann started thinking about her art differently. She wanted to show a relationship, not just a picture of one. This led to her body object series, a collection of photographs. In these photos, taken with photographer Bob McMurtry, Ann wore objects she had created, like her toothpick suit. She said these coverings on the body showed "how we define ourselves at the edges of our bodies."

privation and excesses

In 1989, Ann showed privation and excesses in San Francisco. She used $7,500 worth of pennies! She covered a large part of the gallery floor with them, sticking them down with a thin layer of honey. On the edge of this sticky floor, a person (sometimes Ann herself) sat. They would wring their hands in a hat full of honey.

palimpsest

This installation was a team effort with Kathryn Clark in 1989. It was shown in New York. The artwork had two main parts. One part showed "memory lost," and the other showed "memory experienced." In the first part, window walls were covered with printed texts using shoe polish as ink. In the second part, visitors could enter a room filled with the smell of beeswax and the sound of paper fluttering. The walls were covered with small, faded newspaper pieces with handwritten memories. A fan made them rustle. In the middle, two cabbages were slowly being eaten by snails.

Works from 1991–2000

indigo blue

indigo blue is one of Ann's most famous works. It was first shown in a garage in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1991. Ann created it to honor hard work and remember manual labor. The artwork included a huge pile of 47,000 blue work uniforms. There were also bags of soybeans hanging on a wall.

Behind the uniforms, a writer sat at a table. They used an eraser and saliva to remove the writing from small, blue-covered books. This act of erasing the past was another way to remember labor. The names on the shirts also reminded people of the workers who lived in the city. The hanging soybeans slowly spilled and began to sprout because of the humid air. This showed the atmosphere of South Carolina. The title and the blue objects also referred to Charleston's history. Indigo was a very important plant and dye for the city's economy. The artwork was later shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2007.

tropos

In 1993, Ann performed her piece tropos at the Dia Art Foundation. The word tropos means "a turn" in Greek. For this artwork, Ann covered the entire floor of a warehouse with interwoven horse hair of different colors. She sat at a small table in the middle of the room. While sitting, she carefully burned each word from a book using a hot electric coil.

Allegheny Riverfront Park

Between 1993 and 2001, Ann Hamilton worked with other designers and artists. They created a new park design for the Allegheny Riverfront Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The park had a lower level, about 35 feet wide and almost a mile long. It also had an upper level along Fort Dusquesne Boulevard. The artists wanted to keep the busy city feeling while also creating natural beauty. They designed a boardwalk with trees, and stone edges for sitting. Their goal was to make a peaceful place with a beautiful view of the city.

Works from 2001–2010

the picture is still

This video was shown in Taura, Japan, in 2001. To make it, Ann used a small camera very close to a black-and-white photo of her son. She moved her hand slowly and continuously over the photo. Because of the camera's position and her hand movement, the video often looked blurry and abstract. Ann said this movement showed that "the picture is still...meaning it's not moving...but also 'still here'...like how history stays with us in the present."

human carriage

In 2009, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum had an exhibition called The Third Mind. It asked American artists to explore how Asian culture influenced American art. Ann Hamilton created an installation called human carriage for this show. Her artwork showed her interest in people, language, text, and physical materials. It also represented how cultural information travels.

She tied together sections of books, which she called "book weights." These were stored in piles at the top of the museum. The book weights were connected to a pulley system, like a "carriage." A "reader" at the top of the museum would manually send the carriage down. The books would then pile up at the bottom of the rotunda. Ann also built a spiraling pipe along the museum's ramps. A smaller bell carriage with Tibetan cymbals slid along this pipe. Before each book weight went down, the "reader" would release the bell carriage. It would ring as it spiraled down, filling the space with sound before meeting the books.

Recent Works (2011–2018)

the event of a thread

In 2012, Ann Hamilton showed the event of a thread at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. This installation had a huge white curtain with large swings. The curtain stretched across a space of 55,000 square feet. Like many of Ann's works, this installation changed over time. It involved the audience in a connected, multi-sensory experience.

Visitors could carry radios in paper bags. These radios played audio from two actors who read texts by different authors. At the other end of the room, a writer sat writing sentences. The artwork changed daily. The sounds of people talking, cell phones ringing, and laughter mixed with the sounds of reading, writing, and pigeons cooing. When people swung on the swings, the curtain would sway. Visitors could interact with the space in many ways, like swinging, looking through a window, lying on the ground, or walking around.

the common S E N S E

Ann Hamilton was asked to create new works for an exhibition at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle. The show was called the common S E N S E. Ann used items from the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture and the University of Washington Libraries. She created an exhibition about animals. It explored the things we share with animals and how we use them.

Cortlandt Street subway station project

The New York City subway system asked Ann Hamilton to create art for the Cortlandt Street subway station. This station was destroyed on September 11, 2001, and was being rebuilt. This project, finished by 2018, is similar to her earlier work called VERSE. It weaves words together, but here it uses texts from important historical documents. These include the United States Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The white text appears on the white walls of the station, covering up to 70 percent of the surface. Ann wants people to experience this project, not just look at it. She hopes each person traveling through the station will have a different connection with these words.

O N E E V E R Y O N E

For O N E E V E R Y O N E, Ann Hamilton photographed many different people. They were from all races and backgrounds. She took the photos through a semi-transparent screen or window. The only time you could see a clear image was when the person touched the screen. Ann would tell the person how to move, relying only on her voice to guide them. Ann felt this related to waiting for answers in the medical field. It's like having a partly unclear idea of what's happening and just relying on a voice, without a physical person.

Exhibitions Around the World

Group Exhibitions

Ann Hamilton has also been part of many group art shows:

• Rites of Spring, Twining Gallery, New York, 1985
• Elements, Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, New York, 1987
• Stranger Attractors: Signs of Chaos, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1989
• New Works for New Spaces, Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, Columbus, Ohio, 1990

Permanent Public Art

Some of Ann Hamilton's artworks are permanent and can be seen in public places:

• Mess Hall, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California, 1989
• San Francisco Public Library Commission (with James Freed, Kathy Simon, and Ann Chamberlain), 1990
• Pittsburgh River Front Park (with Michael Van Valkenburgh, Michael Mercil, and Matthew Urbansky), 1994

Awards and Recognition

Ann Hamilton has received many important awards for her art, including:

• The Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities (2008)
• United States Artists Fellowship (2007)
• The Larry Aldrich Foundation Award (1998)
• The MacArthur Fellows Program "Genius Grant" (1993)
• Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture (1992)
• The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (1990)
• The Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1989)
• The Bessie Award (1988)

In 2014, Ohio State University started an archive called the Ann Hamilton Project Archive. This will keep images of over 35 of her installations. In September 2015, Ann Hamilton received the National Medal of Arts, a very high honor for artists in the United States.