Hug

Audio

• Harmony Hammond, Hug, 1978

  In Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019 (Spanish)

  0:00

  Harmony Hammond, Hug, 1978

  0:00

  Play Transcript

  Harmony Hammond: Hola, soy Harmony Hammond, les hablo por teléfono desde Galisteo, Nuevo México, donde vivo y trabajo. 

  En mi obra Hug, utilicé tiras y pedazos de tela que reuní de diferentes lugares, algunos del ambiente doméstico y otros del Distrito de la Moda al sur de Manhattan. Los envolví alrededor de armazones de madera con forma de escalera. A veces utilizaba escaleras de madera viejas y rotas que encontraba por ahí, y otras veces construía mis propias escaleras. Las formas orgánicas abstractas resultantes me dejaban escapar del arte figurativo, pero aún así me permitían presenciar el cuerpo. Las escaleras siempre evocan los cuerpos que las utilizan.

  Era importante para mí a nivel conceptual que las escaleras no estuvieran huecas o rellenas, sino más bien, como la vida de las mujeres, hechas de ellas mismas, desde adentro hacia afuera, y que lo interior se dejara ver en lo exterior. El armazón de madera funciona como un esqueleto, las capas de tela envuelta como si fueran músculos y tejidos y la pintura acrílica como piel.

  Trazo un paralelo con la frase del movimiento en sus inicios: "Lo personal es político". Comienza desde el centro, desde el núcleo, y va saliendo hacia afuera. Probablemente se relaciona también con las artes marciales que practicaba en aquella época. Hacía Tai Chi Chuan y también Aikido, un tipo de arte marcial japonés, en donde te debes centrar, y los movimientos salen en círculos desde el centro. Así que está todo más o menos conectado.

• Harmony Hammond, Hug, 1978

  In Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019 (Kids)

  0:00

  Harmony Hammond, Hug, 1978

  0:00

  Play Transcript

  Narrator: Imagine these two ladder-like forms as if they were human bodies. How would you describe them? You might say that the little one leans on the large one, or that the larger one supports the smaller. You might describe them as being nestled together. A lot of the descriptions you might come up with would make the sculpture sound sort of...snuggly. And this is one reaction the artist wanted us to have to the work, which she titled Hug. Without representing bodies, she tried to give us the feeling of a body’s weight and touch. 

  Hammond made this work early in the feminist movement, when women were fighting for equality and looking for new ways to express themselves—ways that weren’t defined by men. For Hammond, trying to communicate bodily experience without actually picturing bodies was one way to do that. 

• Harmony Hammond, Hug, 1978

  In Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019

  0:00

  Harmony Hammond, Hug, 1978

  0:00

  Play Transcript

  Harmony Hammond: Hi, this is Harmony Hammond, and I'm speaking to you by telephone from Galisteo, New Mexico, where I live and work. 

  For Hug, I wrapped strips and pieces of fabrics gathered from different sources, some from the domestic environment, and some from streets in the Lower Manhattan garment district. I wrapped them around ladder shaped armatures made of wood. Sometimes, I used old broken wooden ladders I'd found, and other times I made my own. The resulting organic abstract forms allowed me to escape figuration, but presence the body. Ladders always suggest the bodies that use them. 

  It was conceptually important to me that the ladder forms were not hollow or stuffed, but rather, like women's lives, made out of themselves from the inside out—with the inside showing on the outside. The wood armature functions as a skeleton, the layers of wrapped fabric as muscle and tissue, and the acrylic paint as skin.

  It is kind of parallel to the early movement phrase, "The personal is political." Starting with the center, starting with the core, and moving out from the center. And probably it’s related to my martial arts practice also at the time. I was studying at that time the martial arts, T'ai chi ch'üan, but also the Japanese martial art, Aikido, in which case you are centered, and the movements are in circles out from the center. So, it's kind of all connected.