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BIO

Carrie Hott was born in Fort Collins, Colorado in 1981 and was raised in Phoenix, Arizona. She received her B.F.A. from Arizona State University in 2003 and her M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2007. Hott, who works in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, mixed media, and installation, finds inspiration in a variety of subjects, including the underbelly of suburban culture, the romance of southwestern US history, motivation found through pop psychology, meaning found through superstition, and other cultural factors that can shape personal experience. Her work has been exhibited in Arizona, Germany, the UK, and most recently at Southern Exposure, The Lab, and SOAP Gallery in San Francisco, CA. Hott has completed artist residencies at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina and Artstation in Rostock, Germany.

STATEMENT

I use the form and language of painting, drawing, and sculpture to explore, investigate, critique, and wonder about contemporary methods of creating or extracting meaning and a sense of control in one’s personal life. Within this broad interest, I am specifically interested in instances of gaining fulfillment through everyday sources. Examples include motivation found through pop psychology, meaning found through superstition, solace found in personal decoration, answers found through pop cultural narratives passed through movies or television, and other mundane influences that can shape personal experience.

My own familiarity with the region of the southwest United States as the place of my upbringing gives me a fascination with its history and current culture, which is a repeating element in my work. I often relate the human tendency to search for sources of meaning and control to the ‘Manifest Destiny’ belief that originated in the early American ‘conquering’ of the North American west. The United States originated with a characteristic drive to conquer challenge and emphatically pursue happiness. I am interested in how this ingrained and inherent drive is demonstrated in our contemporary consumer culture.

I use representational still-life set-ups, often using contemporary common objects, to develop short narratives that allude to human tendencies to construct, extract, and desire meaning and control on a constant basis, in sometimes subtle and sometimes desperate ways. By examining the tendency to create order or a sense of connectedness through sentiment, superstition, or ritual, I wonder how objects and scenarios assist people in finding meaning and direction in otherwise insignificant places, and what drives the need to feel connected to something larger than oneself because the idea of randomness is so frightening. In effect, I strive to create a visual representation of a longing that exists in every day life.