Today we’d like to introduce you to Anna Dean.
Hi Anna, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
After 17 years in the classroom as an art educator, I went back to school to pursue my MFA. I was set to graduate in May of 2020, but that March, as I was installing my thesis exhibition, the world shut down due to Covid-19. Once I realized that my show was not going to happen, I was trying to figure out what to do next, and I saw a call for an artist-in-residence at the McColl Center. I applied and was accepted, and I spent 2021 working on a project with Atrium Health, investigating the impact of Covid-19 on the Charlotte NC community. I created several works of art, incorporating Covid-19 vaccine vials sourced from a mass vaccination event at Bank of America stadium. These pieces have gone on to be displayed at the Mint Museum, Miami Art Week, various other galleries, and are now part of Atrium’s permanent collection.
Following this project, I completed a public art project for Miracle Park – an inclusive park in Rock Hill, SC. There, I created several sculptural elements for a sensory area.
Currently, I am preparing for an upcoming solo show at Public Works Arts Center in Summerville, SC, which I will install in March 2023. I am also working on a large commission for a hotel in Atlanta that opens in the Summer of 2023.
I was recently selected as an ArtPop class of 2023 artist, and I was awarded an Artist Project Grant through the SC Arts Commission.
My work investigates chaos and order in nature and in the manmade. I work with materials and processes that allow me to maintain a high level of control, and combine those with materials and processes that refuse to be controlled. This allows for a push and pull between my own intentions and what the artwork wants to become. The tension between my own desire to control every aspect of the work – combined with the excitement that comes from the potential for unexpected things to happen – places me directly at the intersection of chaos and order within my own artistic process.
I work in layered imagery, building complexity through the unexpected visual and conceptual connections that occur when information accumulates and erodes. The conversation that happens when organic forms meet geometric, when digital meets analog, or when light meets shadow – all create new connections and opportunities for discovery. I often use technology as a method of control, but I am most excited when something goes haywire. The glitches or unexpected errors are signs of emergence – a collaboration between myself and the machine.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I have always made art. My Mother was an artist – she died when I was 8 years old. My earliest memories were watching her draw, as she sat on the shag carpet on the floor of our old home. Art has always been a part of my life.
The challenge has always been how do I make art in a way that allows me to pay my bills, without selling out?
I spent many years in the classroom, teaching art, because that allowed me to make a difference, and it gave me the opportunity to make the work I wanted without having to rely solely on art as a source of income. However, in recent years, I began to realize that the public education system was not investing in me. I began to wonder what would happen if I took just a bit of the effort that I put into my classroom, and invested it in myself. This was a huge turning point for me. Going back to school, and studying sculpture was the first time in my life that I have ever been encouraged to take up space.
It has been a huge leap of faith to switch gears and go from having a steady paycheck to trying to make a living from my artwork. I know that I could easily make commercial work – and paint landscapes or flowers, and pay my bills – but it’s important to me that I am true to myself as an artist, and painting those types of pieces are just not what I do.
When I am in the zone in my studio, there’s this moment when the artwork starts to take on a life of its own… when I step back out of the work and the work begins to emerge. It’s like watching a star being formed out of space dust or something… that magic moment when the universe comes together to create something absolutely brand new. Once you’ve felt that high, you just have to keep chasing it – and that’s what I do every day that I get to make artwork.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My work investigates ideas about chaos and order. I do this by using methods and techniques that I can control, and combining those processes with materials and techniques that refuse to be controlled. For example, my upcoming show is called “Fluid Dynamics” (I often look to science as a way to understand philosophical/abstract ideas). I was looking for a material that was uncontrollable, so for this show, I focused on ink and water.
If I have a tank of water, and I drop ink into it, even if I measure the ink and put it in the same spot each time, the resulting shapes of ink falling through water are never the same – and the way that the ink expands and contracts causes fascinating different shapes and patterns. These shapes and patterns are out of my control. But, I can elicit control on them by running them through my computer and mirroring them. In my research, I learned that humans find order in symmetry. You can have the most chaotic random scribble, but when you mirror it, people begin to recognize faces in the image. This is because our bodies are symmetrical. So, I took the video and mirrored it, and four of those videos will be playing in my upcoming exhibition.
The videos are combined with sculpture and the sculpture all came from a scribble. I closed my eyes and made a mark, and my computer generated a code based on that mark. This code will be projected onto spinning versions of the scribbles that were cut on a laser and a CNC router. I’m very interested in ideas about language – and the evolution of language. I am using my computer to bring an intuitive, impulsive, chaotic mark into existence, and the computer generates a language of binary code to create that mark. This computer language, combined with my own form of language, is at the heart of this body of work.
How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
I am a collaborative person by nature. When I was in the classroom, I spent many years working in Arts Integration. Arts integration is the best thing that has happened in public education in decades – it brings the arts into classrooms, so that students can learn core content through the vehicle of the arts. I was, and still am passionate in my belief that the arts reveal the best parts of who we are as humans – and when we use the arts in schools, we tap into the deepest core of who our students are. The arts foster discourse, because they allow us to see that all viewpoints are valid, and there is more than one way to get to an answer. I loved this work because of the collaborative nature of the work – and I love finding intersections between the arts and other subjects.
Now that I am out of the classroom (well, technically I still teach – but now it’s adjunct at the University level), but now that I am focusing more on art – I still work collaboratively. Recently, I worked with an amazing musician, Jeff Holland, who “played” a steel glitch sculpture that I created. We recorded the performance and it will be included in my exhibition in March. I am very much interested in the intersection of Art and Music, as well as Art and Science, or Art and Literature. I am always looking for ways to make art connect with people using all of their senses.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.annadeanart.com
- Instagram: @annadeanart
Image Credits
McColl Center
Anna Dean
