Life & Work with Kelly A. Hanning of Ohio

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kelly A. Hanning.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Art has really always been a part of my life! As a kid, I had a really overactive imagination. There was so much time that I was sort of just in my own little world, telling myself stories to pass the time. I would make up these worlds to live in, whether it was mermaids in a grotto or mysteries in old mansions.

As I got older and I was able to use art to communicate all these weird little stories I would make up, and obviously I started with stick figures and suns in the corner of the paper, but it progressed to making rocket ships out of the vacuum cleaner box and making little clothes for my dolls! By the time I got to middle school though, I had a bit more of a focus on painting and drawing, and I spent a lot of time refining those skills.

It’s funny though, because once I got to college I realized that some of the ideas I wanted to communicate were a bit bigger than one medium and I actually went back to cardboard sculptures and little figurines! I was making rooms full of larger than life forms and really expanding on my world building through whatever medium best fit the task at hand. I am really lucky to have gone to two schools that put such an emphasis on interdisciplinary ideation: Florida State University for my BFA and Ohio University for my MFA. It was incredible to be given the space to explode the ideas in my brain into a scale that is as large as I imagine them!

Now I am using everything I’ve learned to create even larger pieces. As an Art Director at The Scarefactory Inc. I spend every day sculpting, painting, and dressing monsters that are bigger than the building meant to contain them. It is really the most unique job out there, and I think is a great fit for my special set of skills!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I think everyone faces road blocks, especially in the arts. It is not an easy profession and it’s not for everyone! The arts are constantly underfunded and it can be really difficult to support yourself. I do think though, that a lot of the struggle of it can contribute to some really incredible work. The art world is a pressure cooker that really puts your patience and persistence to the test every day.

Right now I’m going through my Saturn return and it’s a serious period of testing what is working in my life and what is working against me. It has really been a tough year and I’ve shed a lot of negativity, but sometimes it can be tough to let go of people and things even when they’re hurting you because you’ve grown so comfortable with them. Through all of this, I have learned that comfortability isn’t always conducive to the pursuit of bettering yourself.

In this time I’ve taken a bit of a hiatus from making art, and now that I’m in a place where I’ve severed all the cords that were tangling me up, I am so ready to go back to doing what I love most. I’ve really felt the heat of that pressure cooker and now it’s time to take the lid off and enjoy the roast!! I have some big ideas that are almost ready to get into motion and I am so excited to share them!

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I think the medium I’ve spent the most time in would have to be painting, I’ve been working on those skills for decades now. For a while now though, I’ve been making soft sculptures and puppets that I think are very unique to my voice! There is something really special about creating a character and then bringing them into the physical realm, it is really beautiful the way people imprint on the puppets.’ For a lot of people, growing up on Sesame Street and the Muppets, the puppets can feel really familiar and create a sense of closeness. That’s been a really fun experience, to share that closeness with people through the puppets. I’ve gotten a lot of opportunity to bring them around since moving to Columbus, especially working with Pilgrim through OpenHeart Creatures!

She has created a really incredible space for people to express themselves through puppets and wearable art. It is really amazing to watch peoples’ walls break down through the voice of a puppet (including my own)! That’s what I’ve been really proud of the past few years, getting back into stage production and having the opportunity to share the wild stuff I’ve got going on in my noggin!

We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
I honestly don’t believe in luck anymore. Everything good that has happened to me has taken work to get and work to maintain! Sometimes a blessing feels like a curse a sometimes a curse looks like a blessing! A lot of people want to attribute luck to talent, but the fact is it comes from constant and consistent work that can get seriously boring after enough time. You have to keep choosing to work through that boredom over and over again to get anywhere!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kelly_a_hanning_art/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Kelly-A-Hanning-Art-100034751936036/