Jane Hammond

The works on paper by Jane Hammond are a complex melange of materials and mediums which can include 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. Hammond 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.