OCTOBER 2020
CENTER GALLERY
Borean Lines | David Hansen
Artist Q&A:
Can you tell us a little about your background?
I grew up in downtown Anchorage. I went to school on the East Coast and West Coast, but kept coming back to Alaska. Growing up in the environment of Anchorage gave me an opportunity to have the freedom to explore unconventional ways of building, doing, and being than you might have in a rural setting, or fully urban setting. You still have the connection to industry and art. There is the freedom of the rural, but the information and materials that come along with being in a city. It is the space and environment that keeps bringing me back, paired with the inherit wildness of the individuals who live here.
How do you think your work as both a wildland firefighter and architect influences your art?
I spend summers working as a Wildland Firefighter. This work influences me as an architect and artist. The reason I like architecture is the same reason I do art. It is the communication of one’s soul that drives art. My growing up with art was my means of learning and understanding the world. I was able to learn more about academics. This was my foray into architecture. From an early age I was showing understanding of learning by creating art to demonstrate my ideas. This was a direct tie to going into architecture.
Working as a wildland firefighter, we put a year’s worth of work into 5 months. This intensity parces away unnecessary aspects of life. For example, a wildland firefighter's pants are cut short, sitting just below the top of the boot. While it looks silly it keeps the cuffs from dragging in the mud or getting caught on sticks while a tree is falling. This willingness to remove any hindrances to functionality transfers to my art and architecture. Functionality and usefulness take precedence over fashion and convention. If it’s not working, you get rid of it in a direct way. There is a pragmatism embedded in my work as an artist that comes from my work as a firefighter.
Can you describe your installation Borean Lines?
This piece is a mirror of my experience with Anchorage, in which a rural birch tree and an industrial conveyor belt makes sense to me. The scale of the tree and the width and material qualities of the conveyor belt are in balance. Both objects come from within 45 miles of the other. The conveyor belt allows me to play with the rigidity of the birch tree. Birch are amazing, they are the first tree to come back after a disturbance. They are a hardwood, but they grow quickly. In a high wind, they have an expressive way of bending and moving- rather than breaking. This piece is about the qualities of birch tree brought to the extreme.
What are you working on now, or alternatively, what do you want to be working on next?
This sculpture is titled “Borean Lines”. I would like to explore this further in a set of pieces that explore the expressiveness of the material, in the sense of the place. I am currently working on a long term study of Alaskan winters that track the passage of time and the palette of light that we experience in the winter months.
