Aif hapgood

11/15/15, 5:15 PMArt in focus: Artist and student Haley Hapgood on developing her …e as a printmaker - The University Daily Kansan: Arts And Culture

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Art in focus: Artist and student Haley Hapgood ondeveloping her own style as a printmakerMadi Schulz l @Mad_Dawgg | Posted: Sunday, October 18, 2015 7:54 pm

A handwritten phrase is the first thing to note uponentering the studio space belonging to Haley Hapgood, asenior from Kansas City, Kan.

It reads: “La différence entre ton opinion et un café c’estque j’ai demandé un café.”

“I’ve been kind of teaching myself French,” Hapgoodsaid.

Translated, the phrase says: “The difference between youropinion and a coffee is I asked for a coffee.”

Looking past the sarcastic French phrase, a sweepingglance around the studio space in Chalmers Hall revealsthe talent of Hapgood, a visual art and art history major.Along with a few paintings, Hapgood’s prints are themajority of the artwork.

Although Hapgood’s talent is readily apparent, she wasn’t always set on the art school path. While inhigh school, she was faced with a decision: study art or biology. She hoped that she could maybeillustrate textbooks. With interest in both, she resolved to let her AP scores decide.

When the scores arrived with a higher mark on her AP art portfolio, Hapgood decided to pursue aneducation in the arts. But her decision didn't mean the road ahead would be easy.

“Specifically with printmaking, I feel like there’s this kind of pressure to either be creating newtechniques or to be making images that are kind of going along with modern day,” she said. “Because it’ssuch an old medium there’s this kind of urgency to keep it new.”

But before Hapgood could begin thinking about innovating in her field, she had to get past the initialclasses in the visual arts program.

“The foundations classes we take are so tough," she said. "I was even questioning just being in the artschool."

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Haley Hapgood poses in her studio, whereshe works on her many projects ofpaintings and prints.



It wasn’t until a graduate teaching assistant took her Drawing I class to the printmaking classrooms thatshe rekindled her love for the art form, which she had previously dabbled in when she was in high school.

Now, Hapgood works with intricate processes to produce her detailed prints. One is intaglio, an oldprocess in which a metal sheet — usually copper — is layered with acid-resistant grounds, usually wax.The artist then draws through the wax, and the copper that’s exposed is eaten away by acid, and the inksettles into those pits. Finally, when the metal is run through the press, the paper is pressed into the pitsand it picks up the ink to produce the image.

Hapgood has also developed her own style, reminiscent of pointillism. She uses tiny dots to form herpatterns, and she sits for hours with her hand vibrating over the metal plate. She discovered this style inher high school AP studio art class when she was tasked with making a body of work for an art showcase.



“[The dot drawings] started out really figural, like drawing a person’s face or hair with these dots, and Ifound that I really, really liked it,” she said. “I kind of abandoned it when I entered art school just formainly working with the figure, but I picked back up on this my junior year and realized that I still loveddoing just this little intricate work.”

Now, the work serves as an escape.

“It’s really peaceful for me. I get lost in it — it’s kind of a meditation,” she said. “I can just put on amovie and just sit here and do this for hours.”

This meditative state reflects an important source of Hapgood’s inspiration, which draws on , who works with bee pollen and rice. Hapgood uses Laib’s zen

philosophy to relate to her own prints when she creates “abstract patterns that cover a large field ofspace.”

the work ofher favorite artist, Wolfgang Laib

Aside from her inspiration found in other artists, her ultimate inspiration comes from a deeper source:herself.

“I personally draw a lot from my own emotions. I draw a lot from my mental illness. I deal with anxiety,depression, stuff that a lot of other people deal with,” she said. “Being able to share an emotion or afeeling or an experience with other people is really what inspires me to make art that could do that."

She added: "Because I’ll hear bits of songs, or poems, and even just like little bits of words will kind ofmake me feel that kind of deep-seated emotion, and I want to be able to do what those words did, and tobe able to share that kind of common emotion and make them feel what I’m feeling, what I put into thework.”

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1340



With such personal attachments and apparent passion for her work, Hapgood acts as a proponent for artin general and encourages everyone to at least take one art class, even a simple introduction course.

As for career aspirations, Hapgood hopes to work in museums and galleries and is interested in curating,which is why she decided to pursue art history as well as printmaking. Hapgood also aims to obtainmaster’s degrees in art history and printmaking in graduate school.

"I think art is important because it’s a new way of communication,” she said. “It’s a new language thatanybody can pick up, it’s not a language that you have to study for years to even be conversational in.Even if you just take a few classes, you’ve learned a new language, a new way of being able to see, a newway of being able to communicate your ideas to other people, and I think that’s really important.”

— Edited by Madeline Umali

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