Erika Lynne Hanson

Region: West

Website: http://elhanson.com

City / State: Phoenix , AZ

Weaving—as a practice, history, and metaphor—forms the core of my research and creative work. I draw from pre-historical traditions that rely on the simple interlocking of threads, yet also utilize contemporary practices by intertwining digital technology, collaboration, site-specific projects, and social engagement.

Using landscape as a consistent subject and weaving as a persistent practice, my work is conceptually grounded in questions of political, economic, and ecological systems. Each project reflects site-specific research with an emphasis on questions around ownership, value, and exchange. I develop strategies for establishing relationships between the landscape and that which inhabits and helps constitute it, including rocks, humans, lichens, fences, ground squirrels, safety cones, and decorative plants.

My work seeks to illuminate multiple temporalities through both process and outcome. Time intensive craft technologies (woven textiles, ceramic vessels, cast concrete) are combined with found, purchased, or borrowed objects (rocks, slag glass, lichen) to offer a record of a site-specific encounter. With these objects in dialogue, new sites are forged to consider our contemporary relationships with human and non-human systems and networks.