Johan Hagaman

(b.1950) born in Indiana, lives in Nashville
The Spark, The Wick, The Honey, 2005 (detail)
concrete and mixed media, 5 x 26 x 5 inches, 2005.133

This female figure is holding two jars of honey in her crossed arms. Hagaman received her B.A. and M.S. in English at Indiana University in Bloomington. She has exhibited extensively in TN, NC, CO and CA in solo and group shows. Hagaman’s work is in the collections of Gaylord Opryland Hotel, Tennessee State Museum, Jackson Hole Art Association in Wyoming, Evansville Museum of Art and Sciences in Indiana, Massure Museum of Art in Louisiana, the University of South Florida Museum, and the Genesco Corporate Collection among others. In 2005 she received the Individual Artists Fellowship in Visual Art from the Tennessee Arts Commission.

I am a collector of often unrelated and ambiguous images and ideas – not looking for anything in particular, but noticing patterns; and I try to process what it means — how we have been shaped, and what is seeking to emerge–by making something formal. Being covered in vines, leaves, birds – a metaphor that has become a dominant theme in my work for some time – is both about paying attention and also about how what we are paying attention to determines how we shape our world, and are shaped by and tied to it in a circle of reciprocity. – Johan Hagaman