HANNI WOODBURY - ON TO THE NEXT THING
HANNI WOODBURY
on to the next thing
february 15-march 10, 2025
A collection of works
Curated by Robert Shreefter & Susie Nielsen
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 15th, 3-5pm
Artist talk: Saturday, February 22nd 3pm
A conversation with Hanni Woodbury and Robert Shreefter
Open Saturday and Sundays 11-5 and by appointment
My interest in printmaking grew out of a long-standing fascination with the expressionist woodcuts of the Brücke and Blaue Reiter groups active in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. I started my activities as a printmaker carving woodblocks and printing them and eventually moved on to include the many intaglio, relief, and monotype methods available to the contemporary printmaker.
My original training was not as a graphic artist, but as a musician and as a linguist. As such I’ve become accustomed to thinking abstractly. I am attracted to simple forms, and making abstract images on plates is a pleasing way of thinking for me. The challenge of trying to achieve in non-representational art the aesthetic clarity that is found in music is a constant, informing my efforts as a printmaker.
About the artist. Hanni Woodbury is a German-American linguist, anthropologist, musician and artist. Hanni Woodbury was born in Hamburg, Germany, emigrating to the US with her family just after the second world war. She studied music at Bard College and the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music and earned a B.A. in Anthropology at Vassar College, and an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Anthropology, with a specialty in Anthropological Linguistics, at Yale University. Her area of interest as a linguist is the description, documentation, and revitalization of Native American languages, especially the Iroquoian family of languages which she has studied for more than 40 years. Hanni created an Onondaga–English dictionary—the first dictionary of Onondaga. She was awarded one of the Mary Haas Awards in 1994 from the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas for her work on Onondaga ceremonies.
Hanni is trained in graphic arts and printmaking. She studied with a number of artists in New England, most notably, Brian Cohen, Marty Epp, Catherine Farish, Betsey Garand, Elizabeth Mayor, Peter Pettengill, Vicky Tomayko and Bert Yarborough, in classes at AVA Gallery in Lebanon, NH, at the Two Rivers Printmaking Studio in White River Junction, VT, at the Truro (MA) Center for the Arts, and at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions throughout New England. Woodbury was one of the founding members of the Two Rivers Printmaking Studio and has participated in portfolio projects, copies of which now form a part of numerous private and public collections, including the Hood Museum of Art in Hanover, New Hampshire and the Currier Gallery of Art in Manchester New Hampshire, and the Berry Special Collections Library at the University of Vermont.
