"I HAVE ALWAYS HAD A HUGE FORCE WITHIN ME"- FRAGMENTS OF LIFE AND TIMES FROM THE MIND OF MULTIMEDIA ARTIST HANNA HELLSTEN
Sitting here in our huge, brown Alice in Wonderland sofa trying to figure out how to write this blog text…. Looking out from our living room window and downward at our Airbnb, where guests are arriving in a taxi. They open our dog gate, drive up our lumpy-sandy driveway and carry their luggage in. My husband explains, “Inexpensive for other Europeans to travel to Sweden since the crown is valued so low now.” Both good and bad for us. Brings both light and dark energies to us.
Can hear our teenage daughters making jewelry on our kitchen patio. My husband is there too, probably getting tan and flipping through his Instagram pages.
Our thirteen-year-old daughter keeps running inside to me though. Just now she tries adorning my wrist with a new bracelet. Humorously she thinks I should have it since it doesn’t pass her certificate of satisfaction to wear on herself.
The beads trickle off and roll around on the wood floor. Her long pink and white acrylic nails were in the way as she tried to fasten it together on me. It doesn’t work to make a little knot in a thin string with nail tips tapping. “Not meant to be,” I say.
I can be a part of this family entity, and still be creating my own world of things and ideas. Don’t have to go to my studio every day and miss out on family time. Can do it all simultaneously!
In a way, I am like a Queen Bee sitting on her throne feeling satisfied that life around me is running smoothly.
Already had some much-needed Swedish summer sun today. Did some laundry, and the dryer is going as I write. Within ten minutes of the guests arriving to the guesthouse, I made their bed and the finishing touches. Earlier I cleaned the bathroom, the kitchen counter, living room table, some door handles and the fridge. Hung up some new towels and placed the extras in the closet. When opening the front door to leave, I allowed sunlight in and exposed new dirt. So finished by sweeping up some loose garden debris that appeared on the entrance floor.
My spirit animal Kylie was consistently by my side. I cleaned and she sniffed the floor of the guesthouse with her acutely sensitive Pomchi nose. She reminds me of the one other dog I have had and could call my own. He was a mid-sized poodle that I bought in a “joie-de-vivre” moment after spontaneously stepping into a pet store in Torrance. It was my last year working towards my Master of Fine Arts at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. I named him EDO as a play on the psychoanalytic term “empathy displacement object.” This was, of course, an idea that my professor and internationally renowned artist Mike Kelley had worked with in his famous and highly influential artworks depicting used stuffed animals from second-hand stores. Once in a meeting with Mike, he asked me about the little black puppy in my photographs. They were of EDO looking at himself in a mirror, somewhat perplexed and stunned by his own reflection or that of another dog…and then suddenly playful and even ignoring his own image. I daringly responded to Mike, “What if the love object is alive and not just a stuffed animal? What happens then?” He gave me a wonderful, throaty chuckle. I didn’t expand on this line of thought though. Sometimes wonder if he ever thought more about it or not.
It was the Wild West for dogs back then, from the 1970’s to 1990’s. They were allowed to run free on our property, but even dug little tunnels under our fencing to join the other liberated dogs of the neighborhood. Like little gangs these dogs hung out in the streets and explored the mountainous terrain.
There was often some drama. One of our female dogs came home impregnated and the father-dog died on our welcome mat from rat poisoning. Another lost a leg from chasing and barking at the spinning wheels of a truck. He became our tripod-dog but was no less happy to be alive than before the accident. Fights and scratches occurred often. One of our little dogs returned with an eyeball hanging out of its socket. Next time, she had lost the other eye as well.
A very lovely aspect was the symphony of barking. There was a kind of language and even melody to all the dogs of the neighborhood barking in unison or responding to one another. I relished this soundscape. Could be lying in bed reading and suddenly hear an ambulance drive by at the bottom of the hill on Pacific Coast Highway. One after the other, dogs stopped what they were doing in their own yards or on the streets to join in and mimic or answer the call of the siren. We lived kind of in a valley between hills and at a dead end. An echoing effect occurred. It was like being at an outdoor opera. Gave me the chills just as the concert of The Three Tenors did for me at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome 1990!
Me and my family lost all our animals to owls, coyotes, brush fires over the Malibu hills and after leaving our home. The surviving dogs found new families. For a few years, we moved from house rental to house rental in Malibu. My parents returned to Europe and remained there. My father started an internet company. My mother had her art exhibitions. My sisters stayed in America pursuing their careers in music, fashion and starting their own families. I made a film in France. Then landed in Sweden where I still reside.
I am now thinking about my ancestral history with medicinal alchemy on my mother’s side. She was born in Härnosand in North Sweden (Norrland). Supposedly her uncle blended herbs for their healing qualities; but I don’t not know more than this small amount of information. Women were burned as witches there some generations back. I must delve into this background someday. I wonder if all people have some kind of witch history in their ancestral past. Perhaps all of us are witches then?
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I can imagine that it must be frustrating for men who have female partners, because it must seem threatening. I mean, women do have some special properties or propensities – like intuitive thinking and psychoanalyzing. I can understand this otherness which is there or is not, but always an omni prescient bearing on the male psyche via the collective unconscious of media, art history and wars. So, I get men try to hold or push women down for this reason-to feel in control whether it is a real or imagined threat. I have panic anxiety syndrome and think it may be something like this. With the male’s competitive and power-striving tendencies I can fathom a way to dominate is to push the unknown dangers down before they grow too big.
I have always had a huge force within me. It’s shown itself in many ways. Through cattiness to my mother, silent anger treatment to my parents and sisters growing up, running to dance classes all around Hollywood and LA, expressing myself through large scale charcoal drawings during the nights of Bachelor’s degree years, beaming light all around me from my cells and pores so everyone stops and stares as I enter a room, becoming superficially a really sexy persona by self-destructive anti-inhibiting outward acting behavior, hiding from the world so I don’t kill it in one of my rages I don’t trust may finally come out if triggered, lightbulbs going out as I cry or scream outwardly or even more so if inwardly directed-implosive energy is harsher and stronger than explosive…?
I feel I have finally somewhat contained and reigned in this energy now. It is powerful and it can eat me up as well as hurt those around me. It is an energy of love again though. I have somehow and with a lot of hard years been able to return to this place of light. I prefer adding this energy to the world and through my art rather than the dark, angry energy.
In this text thus far, I have written a short journal entry with some internal dialoguing. I want to show some of my artistic tendencies before and after my graduate degree at ACCD. First, I was consumed by strong energies and forces, almost otherworldly or from the dead (we lived on Indian burial ground in Malibu and Los Angeles). Animal spirits and wise elders spoke to me during my wakeful nights when I could explore my creativity and voices.
Like an animator, I revived the silenced spirit-voices into physical form. Like notes of music, they danced through my mind. They wisped through the length of my arms and finally, via fingers, landed on the huge paper arches I had lying on my studio floors. Had my first studio at Pepperdine University. After getting my BFA I used my mother’s art studio. I would work and play during nights when all the living, ambitious, lascivious and greedy energies were asleep. Only then could I really hear, tune in and get into the rhythm of the wise and animal spirit world. This could usually be accessed when the distractions of the social world were in a restful state.
This raw energy had set its tone in my early years as an artist. I was just looking for some peace and quiet, higher knowledge and understanding of the meaning and power of things and some expressive outlet. I realize this time of irreverence toward time and space was necessary for my creative evolution.
Then I felt it was vital to explore my inner life to survive the superficial world of excesses, desires, manipulation of lost souls, etc. happening around me in Malibu, Hollywood and Los Angeles. I know this now since I have returned to my artmaking as a healing process of redefining the exterior and interior worlds. Surviving involves sifting through these two worlds, cataloguing the information and redispersing it through various forms of collage. New patterns are made intuitively, with insight and intellect. Memories and experiences become the material for my dream scaping-like landscapes.
All of this is welcome now. I am not afraid. There are no dangers more than the ones we already have upon us. It can’t get any worse since we are already imagining and dreading what we as humans believe to be the worst-the end of the world in its physical form.
Through my years searching for a place and a positioning in the world-loving and hating, adoring and detesting, etc.…my energy has entered physical form via new media. Growing up around Hollywood and in Malibu with its mythical proportions of human star-ness and cosmic film screen-ness, I had to explore the media forms of photo and film. Since I was a dancer from an early age and always took acting classes with my best friend/aspiring actress Jennifer H I also had hidden fantasies of becoming a famous and well-respected Hollywood royalty. (But looks can be deceiving…and I discovered that glitzy world was not so golden).
I felt I couldn’t do much for the world as a young female actress and had more to offer as my own creative artist person. I thought I could better control the positioning of my artistic expression in that industry. I could choose what to put down on paper or film.
The spiritual orchestra of energies transfigured from charcoal, pastel, acrylic and oil on canvas (or even from material experimentation in sculpture as seen in some of the pictures above) to multidimensional characters, personas, imagos, “alter egos” or “alters” with off-shoots and spin-offs in text, video and film formats. Sometimes these “alters” have later made “the work.” For example, “Trash Girl” made the paintings and installation for my show Transformer at Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm, 2000.
Then “Trash Girl” was invited to perform at Test Portal in Amsterdam 2001. A performance of her many dressings and un-dressings was projected on a large film screen while her current trans-forming happened in front of it in a huge installation of her own trash and clothes. The last “Trash Girl” amalgamation also left her stage and walked out into the public domain of the gargantuan ship wharf building. Ripe with layered fabrics, wigs and lights she was pregnant with both anticipation for her creative fantasies to be enlivened and indifference toward their public reception…pipe dangling from her lips. She is inside herself.
Mentioning pregnancy…I wrote and illustrated two children’s books while pregnant. Watercolor was the only go-to medium that wasn’t going to hurt my babies with chemicals I reasoned. Besides my constant journaling, I also photographed and filmed them constantly.
When they were small children, we created together every day. We worked on many drawings, huge paintings and an installation in our house titled “Aquarium.” We filled the house with throw away sticker materials from my husband’s company Wrap Zone (www.wrapzone.net). We thought we were going to tear the house down anyways and rebuild it. This never became financially possible though. “Playing house” really takes on a topsy-turvy meaningfulness here. Employed at Wrap Zone for a year I couldn’t resist using the vinyl remnants for sculptural pieces which also grew into the house installation. So partial areas of the house are filled with paintings/drawings/sculptures either made on the spot on my own, with my daughters or in the workstation at Wrap Zone. Later I digitally played, mixed and reworked documentation images of the installation together with pictures of our aquarium fish. These finished images were made into an artist’s book.
So, moved to Europe, did a couple travelling mother-daughter exhibitions, some stand-up comedy with bestie Maggan Hammar (we called ourselves “Snea Läppar” –“Crooked Lips”), manifested and re-manifested “Trash Girl” in Sweden, Holland and in my own life wherever I happened to be-Dubai or New Orleans, Florida or Paris…. ”Trash Girl” is always her own wonderful self-full of optimism and gratefulness personified, never tired, but always silent. (Even the most silenced person can be imaginative and free!)
Before starting my own family, I did a series of photo shoots of friends and family who aspired to some kind of public personification (pop singer to birthday girl). These images were later used in a series of paintings called “Girlfriends.” Did my grand gesture of shedding personas and identities, as well, called “Body/Video and ´Queen Bee´ Project.” This was after making the infamous feature-length film “You Look Better Still” with Alexis Hall, a colleague from ACCD. The film was invited and shown at some internationally renowned film festivals, such as The Rotterdam International Film Festival 2002 iffr.com/en/iffr/2002/films/you-look-better-still and can be found on database Filmform in Stockholm www.filmform.com/works/845-you-look-better-still.
In “Body/Video and ´Queen Bee´ Project,” I presented a searching for new meanings after the horror and enticing destructiveness of the film “YLBS.” I needed to discard the layers of identity I had taken on, to move on in my art and life. Shaved my body of all hair. Painted it all black, white, blue, red, yellow and rainbow depending on the color of my environment (a closet full of my mother’s clothes and things matching the color of my body). An experiment on camouflaging and visuality using color codes ensued. Embodying my body, self, actions, movements and expressions while simultaneously filming this theater was a way to see what information was left. This was gathered for storage and possible later use. The project was a hopeful attempt to reveal a possible fluidity between intuitive behavior, structured play, systemic thinking and programmed patterning.
”Worked on a few “Bride” persona-“alters,” characters behind the camera filming violent creative situations, (such as “´Mondo Cain´ or `Peeping Tom´” and “Spagetti Relations”), off-shoot personas to both my mother’s private and public personas (mainly “Partaj-bruden” that coined the phrase, “Have I made a fool of myself now again?!” In Swedish, “Har jag gjort bort mig nu igen?!” www.margaretasjodin.com), dumb blondes in various incarnations such as “The Swedish-American Bikini Girl” and “Marilyn” as well as some male characters (something I’d like to develop further and delve into!).
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Recently I’ve been returning to some old “alters.” They are my own homegrown super heroes, popular icons and role models. With ten years since Mike Kelley’s passing, I’ve had a lot of processing happening to me with which I’ve been forced to grapple. Some of my problematic experiences with art schools and the artist’s lifestyle have been hashed out through my newfound meditation practice. It helps me face and combine life’s difficult aspects with its beautiful parts. Through meditation, dreaming, sleeping and the creative process life and art are not the same but can be mixed, mushed and mashed together. It helps me feel whole more often than not while it is all still happening and going on…the ugly, the gory, the polite, the pretty and life itself.
Nature-its changes and catastrophes and “´Woman In the Dunes´” have been my most recent pursuits of interest, artistically. As I am again focused on landscape and the body, climate change is such an unavoidable issue that it is glaring me in the face. Yes, I have become somewhat of an activist now! Never thought it possible. As Mike once told me in a private meeting in my studio, “All art is political!” He was almost angry with me, and I did feel foolish believing I could stand outside world events. So “who’s seeing who,” “who’s looking at who” and catastrophes are all good matches (and incendiary ones at that) of disagreement for the silent “´Woman In the Dunes.´”
Just dismantled a solo exhibition of my art on the island Värmdö where I live. I was excited and nervous to introduce my art here for the first time. Parents of my daughters’ friends, co-workers from various schools I had worked at, other artists in the area, etc. would finally see what I do. Being an artist sometimes feels like a secret. It’s hard to explain and often easier to keep hidden. Every person you encounter has a different opinion, understanding or appreciation for the arts, so it can feel like an identity-fragmenting process to present oneself as an artist. Each new person needs their own version of me that I need to create, or like a bartender mix together as a new cocktail on the spot for them.
Sandstorm, which is Swedish for Sand storm, was a three-day exhibition, June 4-6, at Gallery Panncentralen on Värmdö.
Our planet’s condition is critical. If Hanna Hellsten’s exhibition had resulted in a doomsday sermon on destruction’s phantoms and dystopias, then it would likely have become overkill and overly explicit. Yet the whole of it does not feel that way. I can also see the opposite, an almost ingenious collector joy of American kitsch. The artist grew up in California where she was schooled by international artists such as Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy.Sure, the world is crazy, why not collect a bit more—before it all disappears. Just look at the pink umbrella with its net, threads, playing cards, plastic things and color splashes. Even skulls can become interesting collectibles within insanity’s corridors. Here and now and then finito—like a tribute in a Mexican carnival.
Yes, it is a bewildering tsunami—of after all, the ordered things abundance. The god of small things recognizes itself. Despair not. Hope is not fully gone. The artist can and wants to give clarity to what is happening on our earth, in the air and water.
Text by Christer Fällman
After note…
I found this wonderful art description of a work by an artist that has inspired me since grad school: Dan Graham's Fishpond/Swimming Pool reveals his fascination with reflection and perception. His plans for a partitioned fishpond-cum-swimming pool illustrate a bi-species participatory art experience, as both fish and humans move within the same environment.
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