Hannah Spector is an interdisciplinary visual artist and poet working out of Austin, TX. Spector thinks of language as a solid object—a concrete and spatial expression that can overturn limiting perceptions of the everyday. Spector has exhibited work at The San Antonio Museum of Art, MASS Gallery (ATX), The Visual Arts Center (ATX), Stoveworks (TN), Johnathan Hopson Gallery (HOU), Flatbed Press (ATX), Transformer Gallery (DC), The Corcoran School of Art & Design (DC), The Katzen Center (DC), and Pyramid Atlantic (DC). Spector has won prizes at The Berlin Shorts Film Festival and The DUMBO Film Festival. She received her MFA from UT Austin in Transmedia & Printmaking. She currently is the area head for CORE: Time&Technology at UT Austin.
Tell us about the classes you’ll be teaching this year.
I have been hired as the Area Head for CORE: Time&Tech, and am teaching two intro sections for time-based media. This course is intended to introduce students to time-based media and varied artistic approaches that they may have never considered “art,” before. It opens their minds to what an artistic practice can be. I encourage students to experiment with a vast array of media and technological tools to make work. I teach 4 units in this course—sound art, video art, performance art, and public art with a digital modeling focus. Just this week we went to the Turrell, “Skyspace” on campus to see how such an immersive (and time-based) experience can impact us viscerally. It was a really great experience!
I also am a Printmaker, and am teaching an Intro to Print course. So far this semester, we have had Annalise Gratovich give a guest lecture, we have gone to the Blanton Print Room & Preparatory Room, and we will soon take a field trip to Flatbed Press. In this course, we look at Relief, Intaglio, Litho, and Silkscreen processes. I love teaching the history of print alongside the technical skills. Print is all around us in so many ways—Lithography is still one of the biggest industries in the US, but it is something we do not consciously pay attention to, even though it surrounds us daily! I encourage students to self-publish and distribute their work in my course, and give them the necessary tools to do so.
What attracted you to the Department of Art and Art History and The University of Texas at Austin?
I received my MFA from UT! I had moved to Austin a year before I began graduate school, without even knowing about the program—I just knew I wanted to live in Austin. I’ve been a part of this wonderful community since 2018, and continue to be drawn to the great work of my colleagues, the students, and the incredible resources that we have here. I’ve worked with so many scholars from across the campus, and look forward to fostering relationships between departments, organizations, and institutions at UT.
How did your professional pathway lead to your focus?
I studied poetry and critical literary theory in my undergraduate degree. For my final projects, I started to make small artist books instead of just turning in a manuscript. I learned how to silkscreen, book-bind, and self-publish. I always thought of myself as a writer, but I saw that the voice of my poetry wanted to be expressed through varied media. I fell into making performance art, then slowly that turned into an interest in video and performance video. I realized that video was a great way to translate the voice of poetry into form and space.
Over the past 8 years or so, I’ve worked very hard on honing and specializing in a variety of skills so that my poetry can best express itself across an array of media. The well of my practice is poetry, and its water feeds many plants—performance, immersive installations, sound, video, photo sequences, drawing, prints, etc. etc. But it's all poetry at the end of the day.
I love time-based media for its ability to create a multisensory experience. I have always been fascinated with the language of film, sequencing, sound, film theory, and how images communicate. This job combines all of my interests and fields of research. It is a dream come true that I get to use all my skills on a day-to-day basis to help students realize their works and open up possibilities of expression.
What’s something that students and colleagues should know about you?
Like I said, my first love is poetry and language. Thus, my great love is the study of how we form meaning through complex networks of words/memories/images/sounds interacting. I’m a huge Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes, Gaston Bachelard, bell hooks, and Sylvia Federici fan. HUGE! I mostly teach from this theoretical perspective and framework.
What do you enjoy doing when you’re not teaching/researching/working?
I am part of the artist collective and non-profit, MASS Gallery. We just turned 16 this year, and are one of the oldest non-profits in Austin. I really love being a part of that community and throwing communal events that support the queer community. I also love to cook, play my synth and guitar, swim, dance, and go see music around town.