For the past 6 weeks or so, Eric Hanson was hanging around the MIA’s Art Research and Reference Library, poking his nose into books and folders of photographs before putting pencil to paper. As an artist-in-residence, courtesy of the Coffee House Press library residency program, he’s helped draw attention, no pun intended, to libraries as spaces for creativity and the production of new work. Last week, he presented this new work to an admiring audience and held court with MIA assistant librarian Jessica McIntyre and Coffee House Press publisher Chris Fischbach to dig deeper into the experience.
The MIA enjoyed the experience at least as much as he did: a creative project that may inspire more people to use the library to create the new and research the old. I’ll leave you with a few final posts of Eric’s work to inspire your future creative endeavor at the MIA!
A variation on the mythic “green man” which I’ve used often before, most recently for the cover of the Kingsley Amis novel The Green Man, published by NYRB. The classical head, for me, always emerges from behind a screen of medieval centuries. The vandal hordes tore the classical world down, using the rubble of the marble forums and stadia for lime to make concrete. Vines grew over the rest. This Green Man, a folkloric creature of rural England now mostly seen on pub signs, may have originated with a Roman statue peering out of the edge of a forest.
About Eric: His illustrations and writing have appeared in Vanity Fair, Harper’s, New York Times, Rolling Stone, McSweeney’s and The Atlantic. A Book of Ages, published in 2008, is his wittily curated collection of moments in the lives of the famous. He also creates children’s books. He discussed his MIA residency and present new work inspired by it on Thursday, June 19th at 7pm in the MIA’s Friends Community Room, during Third Thursday: Get Local. Continue to follow along with other Coffee House Press library residencies here: http://chpinthestacks.tumblr.com/.