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 Nathan Hatch

Sister Bay, WI
Residency: March-April 2013

Project Description
During my residency at Sculpture Space, I created a large outdoor sculpture, Navigator. I have always been interested in tools and their evolution in history and how many people would be unable to identify a tool or its use by modern standards. Specifically, I am interested in how humans have needed to create complex mechanisms to achieve something that some animals can do purely out of instinct. One specific example of this (and the one that I used as a the springboard for my sculpture) is humans reliance on early navigational devices such as a sextant to cross large bodies of water, but a Grey Whale (and many others) will make a yearly migration of over 10,000 miles (round-trip) without any such help. The visual form that this concept took was a sculpture that blended the organic and clean lines of whale bones (mainly rib and jaw) with the mechanical imagery of a sextant. My goal was not to replicate either the skeleton or the sextant but to blend the two and let them inspire something completely original.

About the Artist
Nathan Hatch grew up in a small town in northern Wisconsin and received a Bachelors of Fine Art in 2005 from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and completed the Masters of Fine Art program at the University of Kentucky in 2011. At UK Hatch served as an instructor in the Art department while focusing on public art and creating unique sculptural landscapes.

Hatch has most recently been the artist in residence for Eastern Illinois University and was a featured artist in the biennial publication of Encaustic Works 2012 and exhibition in Kingston, NY. In March and April of 2013 he will be a funded artist in residence at Sculpture Space in Utica, NY where he will be continuing his ongoing body of work that incorporates memory, passage of time and implied reverence as its driving themes.