-Bio-
Cole Hancock, raised in the Appalachian region of Tennessee, graduated with a BFA in studio art from Florida State University in 2021. She currently works from home as a freelance artist and houseplant enthusiast. Her multimedia approach to academic artistry draws from the concept of the Anthropocene, discussing our relationship with nature in an era where humans are the dominant species. Her work is heavily supplemented by traditional craft, incorporating the use of handicraft techniques for the sense of a down-home style in her discussion of the environment as she paints, sketches, prints, and photographs the world around her and compiles the narratives she generates into works that tells their own stories of how humans and nature have compromised to coexist, as well as what happens when they don’t.
Artist Statement
My work draws from tenets of traditional craft to guide my process as I determine what is a compromised space in nature while using ritual as a mediator. My favored media include painting, drawing, book arts, printing, and photography. I unite these in a cross-disciplinary practice that explores the imposition of human geometry and principle on nature and its phenomena. This culminates in my viewpoint of the Anthropocene, a recent term created to describe the era that began in the 1850s in which humans are the dominant species of this planet, characterized by rapid industrialization and humanity’s global scale of effect. My work describes these effects of our stewardship, and the radical changes to the natural order that have since become utterly normal.
Our contemporary inclination is to place our perspective of the natural world onto a pedestal of neo-romanticism, in which the individual is primary and their environment made to reflect their own accomplishment or intellect. Humanity has a tendency to change the world to suits its needs; likewise, we adapt to the nature around us. In these spaces where interaction occurs, implicit compromises are made; I use the narrative that these interactions generate in ritualized format to examine the delicate harmony we have created between us and natural phenomena. I sketch, paint, print, and photograph scenes from everyday life into the format of sculptural books to display the narrative aspect, and use the inclusion of handmade paper made with vegetation to emphasize the connection to the earth. These scenes may be of anything from a park bench, to a town skyline, to an old ruin reclaimed by nature.
A large part of my practice revolves around process. This is in large part because much of my art is based in traditional craft as a conduit for the interaction between humans and nature in its most base, constructive form. My main focus is the artist book, unique in that both vessel and contents are components of the art and are intended to draw equal attention. Because the maximum proper viewing distance of an artist book is the audience member’s arm length, it demands personal interaction, and each viewer must perform what is, in essence, a ritual to properly examine it.