Sketch: Contemporary Artists in Conversation with Emily Grace Hanks
October 25, 2023 - December 6, 2023
The Berea College Art Collection is home to over 250 artworks by Emily Grace Hanks (American, 1886-1962), an artist, educator, and inventor who specialized in observational drawing, painting, and illustration. Though Hanks or her work isn’t well-known today, her career was extremely multifaceted and provides an excellent case study of the pathways that were available to aspiring women artists during this era. In the summer of 2023, Sara Olshansky and Esther Sitver, two artists from the region who also specialize in observational modes of drawing and painting, were invited to the Doris Ulmann Galleries as part of an extended artist residency. Working alongside the Galleries team, Olsansky and Sitver studied Hanks’ work and archival materials housed in the BCAC and created a series of artworks in response to what they found. The resulting artworks – and the exhibition as a whole – explore the connections that can be made between artists across time and raise questions about what it means to leave an artistic “legacy.” What can we find when we look to the past? What can an archive reveal… and what does it leave obscured? And how can we fill in the gaps?
Click here for details on our Artist Talk with Artists Sara Olshansky and Esther Sitver will join the Doris Ulmann Galleries staff to discuss their work and the collaborative curatorial process behind the exhibition, Sketch: Contemporary Artists in Conversation with Emily Grace Hanks, which will be open in the Lower Traylor Gallery from October 25 to December 6.
Sara Olshansky is a draughtsperson and 2D media artist based in Louisville, Kentucky. She graduated from Hite Art Institute at the University of Louisville in 2018 with two degrees in 2D Studio Art and Art History, and a minor in Spanish Language. She has received numerous awards and grants in support of her research and travels, and her work is featured in several public collections as well as private collections across the U.S. Olshansky is interested in exploring addition and erasure of imagery on a single picture plane and how this technique might mirror construction and perception of lived experience and memory.
Esther Sitver is a Knoxville, Tennesee-based illustrator who merges vintage aesthetics with contemporary progressive ideas and humor. Her artwork explores the observable world through the female gaze. Her love for traditional pen and ink drawing pulls together her specialties: portraiture and figure drawing, editorial illustration, pattern design, and plein air painting. Sitver earned a BFA in Illustration from the Ringling College of Art + Design in 2020 and currently works as a freelance artist and for the Knoxville Museum of Art. Sitver has exhibited her work around the southeast, with recent exhibitions at The Emporium and Rala (both in Knoxville, TN). When she’s not scribbling, she can be found rollerskating and hiking around East Tennessee.
Click through the slideshow below to view some of the works featured in Sketch: Contemporary Artists in Conversation with Emily Grace Hanks: