I met Jenifer (Jenn) Hassin eight years ago at her studio in Austin, Texas.
She was just putting the finishing touches on her latest and most important sculpture at the time.
The Afghanistan War had already been raging for more than 13 years and was well on its way to become the longest war in U.S. history.
Along with the War in Iraq, these two wars had claimed 6,800 U.S. military lives.
Her sculpture, “Letters of Sacrifice” (below), was Hassin’s way of memorializing and paying tribute to all those who have fought and died for our country, in particular those who have fallen since the Global War on Terror began in 2001.
While the number of U.S. war casualties has significantly decreased in recent years, there are other grim statistics and persistent problems in the military and in society that tug at Hassin’s heart strings, bring up some very painful memories – in and out of the military — and fire up her artistic synapses.
You see, Hassin – an Air Force veteran, loving mother of three beautiful children and, today, a highly successful artist with a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University — experienced her own share of economical and emotional hardships, even trauma, when growing up as one of six children in a poor family in a small Texas town. At the tender age of 10, Hassin lost a dear aunt to suicide — a tragedy she has never forgotten. Then, less than 10 years later, she was sexually assaulted as a young airman in the Air Force.
Later, assigned to the military hospital at Lakenheath Air Force Base, England, during the peak of both the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, Hassin witnessed firsthand the devastating injuries suffered by our troops in those wars. Some of the injured had been airlifted to Lakenheath from the renowned Landstuhl Regional Medical Center at Ramstein, Germany, when the sheer number of casualties overwhelmed even that superb facility.
During those wars, the U.S, military experienced an unprecedented rise in the number of veterans committing suicide. When I visited Hassin in 2015, on average, 22 veterans were dying by suicide each and every day.
Responding to the crisis, Hassin created “A Battle Lost” (below), made up of 8,030 intricate, spiral-shaped rolls of paper (“a symbol of life to death, beginning to end”), one for every veteran suicide that year. The paper was crafted from the pulping and pressing of military uniforms. This medium — small rolls of paper, inspired by the prayers and notes left in the cracks of Jerusalem’s Western Wall — has become one of Hassin’s favorite techniques in her artwork. The gold “borders” of abstract war maps are inspired by a Japanese art, Kintsugi, the repair of broken pottery with lacquer dusted with gold. Hassin explains that it highlights the cracks and damage, “yet shows that it is now stronger than ever, as well as more precious,”
Both “Letters of Sacrifice” and “A Battle Lost” have been widely acclaimed and on display at places such as the Pentagon and West Point.
Numbers and statistics are an important “ingredient” of Hassin’s art. “I use cold-hard statistics,” Hassin notes, “to discuss facts behind these issues in order to drive home a point, using one unit for each life represented, giving the paper a voice in which it represents.”
With such a deep and personal understanding of tragedies such as rape, suicide, untimely loss of life and other human adversities, it is no wonder that Hissan’s art expresses her own vulnerabilities as well as her strength in overcoming them and, most relevant, her ability to transform her own and collective tragedies into poignant memorials of and tributes to human fragilities, resilience and the miraculous healing process.
In the past, Hassin has expressed such concern and empathy in works such as “Wings of Courage” and “Bottles of Destruction.”
The former represents the disturbing number of cases of children sexual molestation and adult rapes so rampant in Hassin’s hometown in 2011. The latter (below), through the use of thousands of imbedded pieces of jagged, shattered glass from broken beer, wine, liquor bottles, illustrates the 1,213 lives tragically lost due to drunken drivers on Texas roads the same year.
In addition to using paper made from letters and newspapers, military uniforms that have seen battle, clothing worn by victims of sexual assault or other tragedies, Hassin also takes metal, ceramics, glass, “personal artifacts that have embedded histories of trauma” and lovingly transforms them into objects of art that allow the matter itself to have a voice in her art.
In 2020, Google invited Hassin to design the “Google Doodle” for Veterans Day (below), where she once again drew from her own service experience and her respect and gratitude for veterans and designed a patriotic theme using hundreds of small rolls of paper made from military uniforms donated by veterans who served in the Vietnam War and thereafter.
The video below, shows the method Hassin uses to transform clothing, various personal artifacts into pulp and, subsequently, into “life through art.”
While visiting her current exhibit, “Pulp Alchemy,” sponsored by Ivester Contemporary, I was amazed by the number, quality and diversity of her works, encompassing virtually the entire spectrum of elements and principles of art and materials, including her distinctive rolled paper, in addition to pulp paintings, collage, porcelain and glass, drawings and paintings.
Below is a sampling of the beautiful “alchemy” exhibited.
Most striking to me was her beautiful “Acceptance of Fragility,” a large (six feet in diameter) circular composition (lead image and below)
The caption on the wall simply says, “Porcelain Dipped Flowers Embedded in Pulped Air Force Uniform, Army Uniform, a Sundress and a T-shirt, Pressed with Embroidered Lace on Reclaimed Table.”
But it is much more than that. The pulp used to paste the “canvas” (a wooden table) is made from clothing and other articles from survivors of sexual violence and rape. Pressed into the pulp is a crocheted tablecloth that belonged to Hassin’s grandmother with all the history and memories – sweet and bitter – that come with it.
The delicate porcelain flowers in a circular pattern are a stand-in for people which, Hassin says, ”emphasize this never-ending battle with our own memories.”
With “Acceptance of Fragility” as a poignant backdrop, Hassin recently conducted a private and live performance, “Painfully Beautiful” (below), where she symbolizes her own story of sexual assault, vulnerability and transformation. During the performance, five women pour water that is mixed with holy water from the Sea of Galilee over Hassin, who is wearing a paper dress that all but dissolves, leaving her vulnerable, yet brave and resolute — a role model.
Kevin Ivester, owner and director of the fine art gallery where Hassin exhibits her art, describes Hassin, her art and her performance perfectly:
Jenn is brave enough to be an artist. She opens herself completely to the judgement of her audience for the benefit of her audience. She bears the weight of her own-lived traumas as well as the trauma of others and she creates a space for deeply personal conversations to unfold in a curative and beautiful way. Jenn’s work offers a path to acceptance, self-love, and empathy.
To read more about this talented young artist and her work, please visit her web site HERE.
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All images with permission of Jenn Hassin and Ivester Contemporary.
