Artist of the Week: Hannah Meadows

Hannah Meadows is an artist who creates collages with hand-cut paper materials. She's a UW grad who currently lives in the Seattle area.

Seattle Refined: How long have you been creating? What mediums do you work with?
Meadows: I started making collages in 2018. I stumbled into it — originally, I had been passively searching for something new to do, but I found collage and quickly decided it was the only thing I wanted to fill my time with. My first piece was on a 36 x 48" canvas. Eventually, I switched to wood panels and tend to stick to larger designs, with my works ranging from 30 x 40" to 48 x 48".

I work exclusively with paper materials, from magazines and old coffee table books to discarded gift bags and craft paper. About 80% of my materials are recycled or donated.

Can you tell us about your artistic process and how the different stages work into it?
The paper pieces are glued to wood panels and sealed with UV protection. Due to the size and intricacy of the collages, each piece can take hundreds of hours to make — half the time is usually spent collecting the paper and the other half designing and gluing. However, after six years, I've built my paper colors up to the point of only minimal collecting between each collage.

When I first started, I was cutting out images of people, places, bugs, flowers — what you might picture when thinking of a traditional collage artwork. But after a while, I gravitated almost fully toward colors and patterns. Eventually, I built up a unique and colorful paper collection, with some of the paper pieces being one-of-a-kind.

Tell us about where your inspiration for your art comes from.
Nature is a huge inspiration, but also general emotions and color. The vividness of my pieces stands out the most, and I choose to focus on happiness and joy as what I want to convey.

Do you have a specific "beat" you like best – nature, food, profiles, etc.?
Aside from the colors and patterns, I also gravitate toward butterflies and flowers, with some abstract landscapes mixed in with my general abstract works.

Do you have one piece of art that means more to you or is extremely special to you?The first works of what I made will always be special to me — they were the sparks that led to even better ideas. "The Mountains" is the first collage, "Autumn Begins" is the first collaged globe, and "After" ( aka Fred — 5'8") is the first collaged skeleton model.

Each has given me fresh ideas for the future, and besides my usual pieces on wood panels, I can't wait to explore further with spheres and, eventually, another skeleton.

What experiences in your life have affected your art the most?
I'm very much an introvert, which has shaped how I approach my work. I tend to dive in for hours and hours when building up either my paper stores or focusing on gluing.

If we want to see more of your work, where should we go to find it?

• Website (not my whole collection at the moment): hannahmeadowscollage.com
• Instagram (best place to see the process of my works and my most recent pieces): instagram.com/hannahm.collage

What is next for you? Anything you're working on right now that you're really excited about?
I'll be an Artist in Residence at Islandwood on Bainbridge Island at the end of March, where I'll be teaching elementary students across King and Kitsap counties about my craft. After that, I'm open. It wasn't until this year that I built up a collection big enough to start approaching galleries or even thinking of selling, as everything takes so long to make.

Lastly, how do you take your coffee? (We ask everyone!)
My day job and art tend to be lonely and isolating as they're both very solo in nature, so I try to get out in the mornings and stop by my favorite local coffee shop.

If I'm not making myself a cup of black coffee at my place, I walk to Diva Espresso in Greenwood and get a 16oz cold brew with light ice and no room for cream. The baristas there are amazing! I make sure to grab a sticker off the coffee bar every morning and stick it to my lid before I leave.

About 'Artist of the Week': This city is packed with artists we love to feature weekly on Seattle Refined! If you have a local artist in mind that you would like to see featured, let us know at hello@seattlerefined.com. And if you're wondering just what constitutes art, that's the beauty of it; it's up to you! See all of our past Artists of the Week in our dedicated section.