Living the dream
A black sea. A yellow sky. Flowers floating everywhere and a train rumbling the wrong way down a haywire track. When artist April Hammock wakes from a particularly forceful dream, these strands of overnight imagery she can recall often weave their way into her work.
“I used the colors from that dream in a painting,” Hammock says. “But it was so intense, the painting just can’t do the dream justice.”
Hammock’s physical or psychological state has always informed her work. In 2007, a back injury not only limited her mobility, it triggered a year-long minimalist period that saw Hammock cease slinging paint in her garage to the strains of Wilco and David Bowie in favor of sitting still in her living room and quietly concentrating on shorter, more controlled brush strokes.
For the past decade, Hammock has been one of Baton Rouge’s most vibrant artists, mixing abstract expressionism with outright surrealist whimsy. Like the surrealist icons of the 20th century who viewed their work as a necessary reaction to a logic that the world’s superpowers used to bring forth world wars and the atomic bomb, Hammock is wary of all the paths reason can lead humanity. She believes intuition is as important as logic.
“I’m concerned with this obsession with technology,” Hammock says. “Technology is fine, but it needs to be put in its place. People need to be able to live and think without it. Balance is important.”
Liz Walker credits Hammock’s work—which Walker now sells through her own Elizabethan Gallery—for turning her on to more contemporary art.
“I saw these pieces of hers that looked like calming seascapes to me, and I really made an emotional connection to it,” Walker says. “A lot of people want to connect with contemporary art, but they don’t understand it. But with April, you get more than just a bunch of lines.”
After earning her MFA from LSU in 2001, Hammock had a laser-like focus on finding the right day job, one that would put a roof over her head while allowing time for her creativity to blossom. Like many young graduates, though, she became so ensnared in this battle that the way she viewed her own work was manipulated—and not necessarily for the better, she says. Now that Hammock is settled into teaching senior-level students in Baton Rouge Magnet High School’s Talented Visual Arts program, she once again feels the same sense of security she had at LSU. “It’s a sense of freedom, like in grad school, which for me was a high point because I was very comfortable with my art then,” Hammock says. “Now, I’m feeling the same way. I’m more open to my thoughts and feelings.”
As a teenager, Hammock was just like her students: eccentric, intelligent and enamored with freedom. She sees herself in them, and many of these students see themselves in her, too. Some of her recent graduates hold acceptance letters from the country’s top art institutions, revered colleges like Savannah College of Art and Design, Rhode Island School of Design, Pratt Institute and Parsons.
“The kids are the reason I am there,” Hammock says. “Seeing them express themselves and try these crazy things is so inspiring.”
Hammock is surrounded by dreams that inform her art, both the surreal landscapes of her own sleep and the optimistic aspirations of her teenage students.
“My passion is to distort everything and mess with my imagination,” she says. “That’s what I want to do in 2011—to be less focused on color and space and just have fun with my work. I want to explore more.”
Hammock plans to premiere new paintings and drawings in a group show at Baton Rouge Gallery in July. Visit batonrougegallery.com for more information on hers and other upcoming exhibits.
aprilhammockstudio.com
