Sketch: Contemporary Artists in Conversation with Emily Grace Hanks

October 25, 2023-December 6, 2023

Doris Ulmann Galleries, Berea College

“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?”

-Kelsey Malone, Curator, Doris Ulmann Galleries and Berea College Art Collection

All of the works above were made by Emily Grace Hanks during her long career as an artist, illustrator, and art educator between the late 1890’s until the time of her death in 1962. Hanks taught at Pratt Institute and was an expert at teaching anatomy of the head in drawing. She went on the publish several articles about drawing the head and patented educational head forms for the classroom. She was a prolific independent artist, a published illustrator, and the lead artist at Herter Looms.

After the residency at Berea College in 2023, the artworks below were created in response to and informed by Hanks’ collection at the college. The silhouettes cut from panels are directly sampled from her figurative work. Later this body of work exhibited alongside a selection of paintings and drawings by Hanks at Berea College.