Recent Artwork
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Graduate thesis show documentation. Click the grey button for the artist statement and exhibition details.
TEXT
Recent Artwork
Less Recent Art
Videos
Selections of the Past
Bio
CV
Graduate thesis show documentation. Click the grey button for the artist statement and exhibition details.
TEXT
1,318 inch labyrinth made of approximately 1,000 lemon halves
Rocking Stairs at the Beach, 2023
The stairs in these still images have been used in a live performance, a video and exhibited as a sculpture. Visually in theater the staircase can be used to give characters authority, power and dramatic mobility; by rounding the bottom of the steps the sculpture rocks. The rocking stairs are not clearly directional, stable or fixed. The sculpture gains agency, it tips over, maybe dangerous
Waiting Room, 2022
Waiting Room was an installation for waiting. By assigning the task to wait, you are responsible to wait, and productivity gets tangled up with inertia.
It can be hard to implement patience and rest without it being for someone or something outside oneself.
A waiting room is the closest to a break without taking a break, your availability is unavailable. It is disguised relaxation.
Personally, waiting is my preferred method of escape, because when I am entirely available to just be, I am not present, instead I see it as an opportunity to pile on another task. Similarly, adding lanes to a highway doesn’t reduce traffic, it accommodates a higher volume of traffic. Technology has given us more time to do more tasks, not more free time.
Cafeteria chairs, lobby chairs, two floor lamps, rolling utility table, Kleenex box, clipboard, drum sticks, books, wood, clay, metal, rope, acrylic, galvanized conduit, conduit bender, clock,
photograph, paper, pony beads, autoharp, aluminum, stickers, spray paint
Dimensions variable
PAST ARTWORK
Feet, 2016
Automatic Needlepoint Screen Door I, 2013
Automatic Needlepoint Screen Door II, 2013
Mondrian Tennis Courts, 2011
Hannah O’Brien has spent time in Dallas, TX, New York, NY, New Orleans, LA and most recently Los Angeles, CA. After earning a BA in Studio Art from Loyola University New Orleans she moved to New York where she had her first studio at Reis Studios in Long Island City. As the studio began to feel like a cage an urgency to be in public led her to join the stand-up comedy circuit. O’Brien did alternative stand-up comedy from 2017-2021. During the Covid Pandemic O’Brien’s understanding of performance broadened and merged with performance art. In 2021 O’Brien moved to Los Angeles and began working as a production assistant downtown at a fabrication warehouse, and applied to graduate school at ArtCenter College of Design. In 2024 she earned an MFA with a body of work that utilizes the technique of defamiliarization in the medium of sculpture, performance and video editing.
maryhannahobrien@gmail.com
Pronouns: She/They
EDUCATION
2025 Marina Abramovic Institute, Karyes, Greece, MAI Certificate of Completion
2024 ArtCenter College of Design, Los Angeles, CA, Master of Fine Arts
2011 Loyola University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, Bachelor of Arts, Studio Art
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024 Mirror Mirror, Gattopardo, Los Angeles, CA
2024 Shaped by Lemons, Main Gallery at ArtCenter, Los Angeles, CA
2023 Connections 1978-2023, a continuous installation by Rosemary Mayer’s Estate, Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Promenade Terrace Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Beverly Hills, CA
2023 Corner Piece, Book Launch: ArtCenter Artist’s Book Workshop, Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles, CA
2022 LALAWHON: Live Radio Show, Radio.MontezPress.com, Los Angeles, CA
2017 Threads - A Sampling of Fiber Art, Ann Marie Sculpture Garden. Solomons, MD
2015 Generation X: Razzle Dazzle, A.I.R Gallery. Brooklyn, NY 2014 Out of The Blue, Pop up show, Manhattan, NY
2011 Folgers In Your Cup Senior Show, Collins C. Diboll Gallery; New Orleans,
LOS ANGELES PERFORMANCES
2024- 2025 Public Omelet Bar, Mobile Across Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, CA
2024 Contemporary Art Daily Izakaya Theater, New Theater Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA
2023 Scairs, ArtCenter: Cave Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Lizard Keychain Problem Play #8, ArtCenter: Main Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Leave No Trace? ArtCenter: Cave Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Deluge: Porous Chalice, Curated by Catherine Taft, The Box, Los Angeles, CA
Corner Piece, ArtCenter Open Studios, Los Angeles, CA
Display Dance, ArtCenter: Mullin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2021 Booth 1, Omaha Summer Arts Festival, Omaha, NE
RESIDENCIES
2016 Wagon Station Encampment at A-Z West, Andrea Zittel, Joshua Tree, CA