ARTIST STATEMENT
My studio practice hyper fixates on the materiality and potential of reclaimed house paint. House paint was fabricated to cover, protect, and elevate surfaces around us, but it can also exist independently. By applying it to plastic then peeling it away once dry, a flexible, fabric-like paint skin is formed. Using a variety of processes such as painting, pouring, slip-casting, and paint mâché, I create sculptures and installations exploring paint’s ability to take up space. While challenging paint to exist three-dimensionally, I realized how vulnerable it is to chase potential. The material fights to hold form, but failure often follows. It tears, rips, and sags as it fights gravity, time, and other forces. This realization invited me to turn inward and process my own experiences and emotions through the forms and gestures that pair with the paint. Color and form lean into ambiguity offering a variety of interpretations while titles provide an insight to my own ruminations throughout the process and outcome. Rather than the paint being used metaphorically, it’s through the material pursuit and formal explorations of line, form, and color that narratives of vulnerability, resilience, and personal experience coincide. The work is experimental. Each piece is an ever-shifting, end product. The paint’s transitioning chemical properties cause changes to its materiality and corporeal appearance. I want to witness it all – the challenge, the change, the time, the process, the discovery. My interest lies in the materiality of house paint from the initial brushstroke to its potential demise.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sammie Jane Hardewig was born in 1994 in Cincinnati, Ohio. From a young age, she was often told that she had potential. After hearing the word repeatedly throughout her life, the definition began to change. It stopped feeling like encouragement and began feeling like she was constantly falling short, constantly failing. It was ironic when she realized her obsession with reclaimed house paint boiled down to the very same thing – the potential of material. Hardewig’s work explores the materiality and capabilities of reclaimed house paint through experimentation resulting in painting, sculpture, and installation. Creating with this material helped her readdress her relationship with potential while gaining a broader perspective on her own experiences and life. Hardewig received her MFA in Visual Art and Museum Studies Certificate at the University of Kansas, and BFA in Visual Art and BA in Art History from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. She has exhibited in numerous locations including the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, OH; Edgar Heap of Birds Family Gallery in Lawrence, KS; Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, OH; HoK Architects in Kansas City, MO; Arts + Literature Laboratory, Madison, WI; and the Eisentrager-Howard Gallery in Lincoln, NE. In 2022, she was awarded Best in Show for the Debut the New Virtual Exhibition with the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, KS. Hardewig is currently located in Marquette, Michigan, and is the Collections Curator for the DeVos Art Museum at Northern Michigan University.
© Sammie Jane Hardewig