Hannah Falvey

Hannah Falvey
BFA in Printmaking
BA in Graphic Design

Untitled
2020
Intaglio and embroidery on muslin
3" to 7"

The majority of the work I’ve made over my 4 ½ years at Rhode Island College has been based around nostalgia, and more specifically, the longing we feel for time that has come and gone. Over these years I have contended with transitions that have forced me as an artist and as a person to require intentional attention on the present as a means of survival. These circumstances have been a catalyst for a personal change in perspective, shifting from a place of romanticizing the past to romanticizing the present.

In previous bodies of work, I considered the idea of the anticipation of nostalgia; focusing on how much bigger life seems in memories when looking back on them and how this effects how we view our lives ‘in the moment’. To communicate this, I synthesized my printed illustrations with embroidery, using media that read near identically from a distance, but were ultimately distinctly different ways of mark making. I continue to play with the innate connotations of kitsch and nostalgia that come with working within embroidery hoops.

Thought and feeling are abstract, and that’s something I was trying to capture in this body of work. A sort of forced perception, and evocation of the degree of separation that comes with trying to articulate to another person what’s going on in your life. I juxtapose multiple illustrations printed from the same plates, some in relief and others more traditionally from the incised lines of the plate. In doing this I explore different processes within my medium and how they affect how the same image is read visually. Both methods create sharp linework in opposite colorways. I then stretch the images over wood or crop them within a circular embroidery hoop. My aim is to manipulate the illustrations by means of scale, color, and shape to mimic different perspectives and contrasting viewpoints.