Amy Hoagland

RULE gallery press release:

On view at RULE Gallery Marfa, TX: December 2023 - March 2024

Amy Hoagland delves into the idea of the landscape as a time capsule - recognizing that Earth's terrain contains multitudes of secrets about our past, present, and future. This is a place where time melds together— the rocks, ice, and land offer stories that the past is present—where time is folding upon itself to be replayed continually. These cyclical themes remind us that we all live within a shared state of flux and encourage us to ask, how do we ‘read’ a landscape or know a place? How does one's perception shape one's view of the changing world?

In developing the work for the show, Hoagland spent time in regions of the Arctic and the Chihuahuan Desert, cultivating relationships with each location through sensory research. Bringing these observations back into the studio, she translates them using materials such as scientific glass and rocks from the region, as well as projection and photographic installations, intertwining the works with elements of reflection, light, and shadow to investigate these questions. Consistent throughout the exhibition are web shapes. A web is a non-hierarchical system of organization in which every point within the design is dependent on every other juncture —a shift in one point determines a change in the other. Moving images flicker through suspended scientific glass sculptures, refracting like the iris of an eye or a celestial starburst. Sculptural glass forms slump over rocks like glacial ice moving over a rock bed or time bending in a black hole. These elements act as vehicles for the art, revealing parallels between the two geographically separated landscapes. “My work stems from a deep care for the landscape and a desire to relate to and understand it," says Hoagland. "I hope to create more empathy from the viewer because I think that with more understanding, we can better relate to the landscape and treat it more symbiotically."

Documentation by Valerie Santerli and Sophia Poppy Erickson

scientific glass, mirror

2024

sheet glass, oak

45” x 30” x 32”

2025

2024

Video documentation of a scientific glass and mirror sculpture reflecting water and the surrounding landscape in addition to my body. In this work I am thinking about ways in which time is expressed in the landscape. The element of reflection is seen frequently across my practice. Mirrors, like water, reflect the surrounding landscapes, providing a new perspective. Mirrors are signifiers of identity, of subjectivity; they provide fleeting evidence of our materiality. 

Responding to the interconnectedness of living and nonliving things, Thawing Web spans between light, glass, ice, and air, revealing connections in a shared state of constant flux. A melting ice cave in Colorado drips, freezes, and camouflages a handcrafted glass structure—uniting the materiality of ice and glass. Moving images flicker through hanging scientific glass sculptures, refracting light like an iris of an eye or a celestial starburst. This sculptural multimedia installation heightens our perceptions of the unverbalized natural phenomena around us by uncovering material and elemental parallels within our environment.

2023

Scientific glass rods act as a lens to view the surrounding landscape. The glass creates a visual blur in the landscape and provides connection to lab equipment and the scientific understanding of the world around us. This work investigates how our connection with our surroundings can be blurred through the lens of scientific identification. Distorted Landscape is questioning how we “read” a landscape or know a place. Do we know it through learned information or from experience, perhaps both? This work is an attempt to better understand the barriers that separate us from our environment. This work was filmed during an Arctic Circle Residency.

This is a project concerned with cultivating hope and resilience in the wake of a changing climate. This is a collaborative project between Cal-Wood Education Center, CU Science Discovery, and myself. Boulder County’s largest forest fire to date occurred in Fall 2020— the Cal-Wood Fire. The burn scar area directly impacted Cal-Wood Education Center’s land.

The initial component of this project involved a workshop with local teens from CU Boulder’s Science Discovery summer camp at the burn scar site. Nine trees were selected in the burn scar area for this workshop. Students gathered around the stumps and reflected on the tree’s histories while they manually traced the tree rings. The simple act of physically using a Sharpie marker and “doing” served as a bridge to the conversation of the current bigger environmental issues.

Working with the material from these initial workshops, I have created stainless steel plates that fit atop each stump that was traced. The students' tree ring tracings were etched into the plates. The plates are mirrored and reflect the surrounding landscape once permanently installed. The stainless steel etched plates will serve as a memorial to what the forest once was, but also to express positive hope for the future. With the memorial installed, community members were invited back for an initial event surrounding the one-year anniversary of the fire. This occurred on October 16th, 2021. As this event coincided with the 1 year anniversary of the fire it provided an opportunity for mourning, celebration, and a collective recognition of the impacts of climate change on the local landscape for an audience disproportionately impacted by climate change, matters of environmental justice, and yet frequently left out of the decision making process. This project is supported with an Outreach Grant from CU Boulder and the Redline Insite Fund as part of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts Regional Regranting program.

Scientific Glass Rod

2021

Created during Tallgrass Prairie Arts Residency in Matfield Green, KS

How is our connection with our surroundings distorted through the lens of western science?

Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “Science can be a language of distance which reduces a being to its working parts; it is a language of objects. The language scientists speak, however precise, is based on a profound error in grammar, an omission, a grave loss in translation of the native languages of these shores.”

Hand-cut mirrors, reflections, video documentation of performance (3:00)

2023

This work is concerned with exposing the viewer to geologic time. Rocks contain secrets of our past, present, and future. Rocks are active agents of change in the landscape. The mirrors reflect rocks back onto the landscape and the reflections bounce creating an experience of movement to share the agency and liveliness of the rocks. Created during a 2023 Arctic Circle Residency.

From Arbor Institute Curator Sam Randall: The Arbor Institute is excited to bring Scope of the Natural to Boulder – a site-specific art/science research study installation created by NeST fellows Amy Hoagland and Jennifer Cole. The project provides an opportunity to participate in scientific research exploring questions about how we experience both nature and art. In this time of continued isolation and collective grief, the installation also provides a quiet space for visitors to ground through a contemplative experience of body, mind, and nature.

From Firehouse Art Center Curator Brandy Coons: To make the sculptures for Scope of the Natural, she 3D scanned rocks and trees using a process called photogrammetry: multiple photographs of the natural forms are placed into a software which stitches the images together to create a 3D file. The 3D file is then applied in digital fabrication methods such as laser cutting to recreate the scanned natural form out of paper, cardboard, and wood. These large-scale sculptures are integrated within wire-frame constructions of welded metal and fused glass rods. Recorded sounds and video projections of ice and water flows in the space evoke even more connection with the natural environment.

Hoagland’s creative use of materials mimics and suggests forms found in nature, while providing further commentary on our understanding of, and relationship to, organic structures. Geometric sculptures welded of metal and glass call to mind the polygonal mesh of gaming environments and computer animation, as well as the fractured forms of natural crystalline structures, while mirrors are used to reflect light around the space in a simulation of water. Each material (cardboard, glass, welded metals) comes from a human treatment of natural resources, recombined and re-presented within the context of a contemporary relationship to digital environments. Her process brings natural forms into the world of human influence and filters them out again, providing an expression of the many layers that separate our sensory input from our intellectual understanding of the world we live in.

2021

Sandstone from Landscaping Company, Flameworked Scientific Glass

This work is a commentary on the human entanglement with the surrounding landscape. A glass shadow is slipping off the surface of the sandstone in a similar way to which an ice sheet moves over a rock bed. The glass is fragmented in pieces and the rods distort the rock itself. The blurred boundary between the shadow and the rock suggests an indistinct, but imminent future.

2022

Etched stainless steel plate, HD video documentation of performance with tree stump from CalWood burn scar area (1:43)

Granite from Boulder Canyon, Steel Welding Rod

60” x 75” x 30”

2020

This work is a commentary on the human relationship with the surrounding landscape. The steel rod built around the rocks relates to the ore held within the rocks. A life cycle is taking place. The rocks have broken free and have been returned to their original location.

Mirrors sanded for 286 seconds each*, projection of glacial melt**, fragmented reflections

2020

*The fastest melting ice sheet is losing 286 gigatons of ice per year

**Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

This is a piece speaking to the fragmented understanding of time and loss. The act of removal of material by the artist’s hand is an attempt to create a connection to the grief of unseen loss. The blurred area in the mirrors reflects onto the opposite wall through the timelapse video projection. The blurred and fragmented reflections suggest a blurry, but imminent future. Viewers are embedded in this installation and confronted with reflections and shadows of themselves. The intent of this project is to make visible and tangible this seemingly intangible threat of climate change.

Scientific glass, projection, water

48” x 30” x 38”

2019

2018

Wind, Sunlight, Shadows

Created during residency with the Marpha Foundation in Marpha, Nepal. Capturing the power of the wind by using sunlight to map shadows over various stones.

Ice Frame I

Flameworked Borosilicate Glass, Projection

2018

Ice Frame II

Steel Rod

2018

Ice Frame II is based off of 3D scan data that I captured from melting icebergs in Valdez, Alaska. The triangulated geometry relates to a computer's interpretation of the melting icebergs. The piece is installed in shallow water to create a reflection of what once was by mimicking the imagery of a full iceberg.

3D scan data from tree

2019

In 2017, I was granted a Windgate Fellowship from the Center for Craft.

http://www.craftcreativitydesign.org/2017-windgate-fellowship-awards/

My award proposal is as follows: 

Applying new technologies alongside craft processes, I will travel to Alaska to take 3D scans of glaciers and icebergs. The 3D scans will create a permanent representation of the melting forms. The scans will be 3D wax-printed and cast in glass in addition to the exploration of other material presentations of the data. Glass casting workshops at Corning Studio in Corning, NY and at Pratt Art Center in Seattle will allow me to learn the process. The Windgate Fellowship will enforce the experimentation of digital and craft processes, and the work created will be exhibited as a solo show in 2018. 

These are selected images of the process and 3D scans that were applied in this work.

This work was presented at the Kentucky College of Art & Design as a solo exhibition February - May, 2019.

Glass, Hxtal NYL-1

Layered Imprint

Cast Glass

2017

Texture is created from coral and fingerprints

Engraved glass, drawing table

Cast metals, geodes, magnolia leaves, tree, drawers

2017

iron, cast paper

Paper, Cardboard, Geodes, Wax, Dirt

Form derived from 3D Scanned Rock