Art Exhibit Reception: July 23, 6:30-8pm

Visit: July 15-August 15, open during library hours

Oak Park Main Library Gallery: 834 Lake St., Oak Park, IL 60301

"My fiber work is a return to an elemental relationship between human hands and the natural world. My process begins with sheep’s wool, one of humanity’s oldest materials, and transforms it into textile. My work is shaped by topographical maps and landscape textures tracing the way land is navigated, charted, and ultimately consumed. Informed by the clean lines of mid-century, I examine the frictions and harmonies of housing expansions and the natural spaces they displace.

"The feminine also emerges as origin, force, geography. The cave is my entry point: a threshold place of shelter, the first mark-made interior. The womb is terrain that holds, transforms, and releases. Birth is not metaphor but physical fact, the body as the original site of emergence. Wool itself carries this logic: it comes from a living body, worked by hands in a tradition that is overwhelmingly, historically feminine. In returning to these materials and forms, I am tracing cycles of nature that predate maps, suburbs, and the impulse to divide and develop land. I am going back to the first interior." 

—Jessica Hannah