HANNAH BEERMAN: @hannahbeerman

 

Hannah Beerman

@hannahbeerman

 

This is an exciting one! I had the absolute pleasure and honour to interview Hannah Beerman who currently has her debut exhibition at Kapp Kapp Gallery in New York, Rubbernecking. 

 

Beerman lives and works in New York, after achieving her BA at Bard College, and her MFA at Hunter College. She is an all round amazing artist, fundamental talent, and excellent friend of mine. 

 

“Beerman sees her paintings as hyper-personal, often losing track of the boundary between painting and self. The artist sees her practice as a conversation between herself and her paintings as much as a conversation between the paintings themselves. Beerman playfully describes her paintings’ changing moods and personalities, noting that some days a painting can be feeling “shy” or “in love with another painting,” while two others could be “feuding.” As with Carol Rama’s Bricolage works of the 1960s, or the kinetic works of the late Carolee Schneemann (who was a friend of Beerman’s), the works at once combine heartbreak and humor.”

 

Beerman is a beautiful beautiful soul. In the experience of doing these over 300+ interviews, every other person I speak to mentions Hannah to me, telling me how wonderful she is and helpful and kind. 

 

  • INTERVIEW

     

     

    Hannah - Who or what would you say are your biggest influences?

     

    Survival, processing living - figuring out how to integrate and digest it - and how to want to keep going.

     

    And, how do you think these influences come out in your work?

     

    Disjuncture, humor and absurdity as nourishment, celebrating awkwardness, discomfort, romance, alienation, - at first look loud, sometimes more timid...

     

    Tell us a bit about your process. Your work includes some incredible materials such as hats, froot loops, phone cords…. Tell us how you work with your materials and create your pieces?

     

    Don't have the cohesive sentence-making hat on right now. So - collections, founds, built up , knocked off, - ecosystem - buzzing, everything goes on each other, as many as i can fit on the floor - but i still nap on them sometimes. pieces of each other all shift around - maybe a musical chairs, pent-up tension, release. 

  • What does an average working day look like for you hannah?

     

    Waking up at what some might consider an egregiously early hour, this has only happened during quarantine. The light through my window is sharp and unforgiving and I fucking love it.

     

    My studio is my bedroom and my kitchen so I just get to work. I don't brush my teeth til after lunch. I'm alone all day in here so I'm here and talking to myself out loud a lot and making up songs. I work on as many paintings as I can fit on my floor at a time. When I'm deeply working I can't hear anything, even my phone ring. Sometimes, I make up personas for little videos I shoot on PhotoBooth that I never show anyone but use as color studies for paintings. I can’t tell the different between my self and my work so definitely a lot of psychological gymnastics.  I’m working on 9 paintings right now. Maybe 11.  As I write this, I’m taking a break one painting I’m working on that, hasn’t let me in yet, and I haven’t let it get to know my whole self yet either, I feel like I want to protect it or shield it from all of the parts of Hannah.  But I also woke up with tons of glitter and all over my body and my face, from other paintings that kept me up all night experimenting, sewing pillows that look (uncannily) like bread to large canvases with inches of built up texture made with rice, popcorn kernels, acrylic gel... like maybe there is room for me in the world after all, evident of believing my broadcast is worthy. Talking about process and broadcast...I could go on forever, I’ll leave it there for now...

     

    Who is your favourite historical female artist?

     

    Rosie Lee Tompkins and Carol Rama

     

    Who is your favourite female artist practicing today? 

     

    So Many!

     

    Angela Dufresne, Mary Reid Kelle, EJ Hauser, Rachel Williams, Patricia Ranee Thomas, Mika Rottenberg, Katherine Bradford and forever Lisa Sanditz.