Trenton Doyle Hancock

Research: Nelly Bright

Born: 1974 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Grew up in Paris, Texas

Residence: Lives and works in Houston.

Training: Associate of Science, Junior College, Paris, Texas

B.F.A. Texas A&M University, Commerce, Texas 1997

MFA Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia. 2000

Major : Printmaker

Medium: - Collage - Documentary film as well as paintings, drawings, assemblages and objects composed of acrylic, felt, fake fur, plastic and “disposable” matter.

Trenton tackles sticky subjects and addresses the conflict surrounding life, death and the nature of good versus evil.

Trenton Doyle Hancock, in his own words ,from a PBS documentary

“ Art in the Twenty-First century”

“Question: why do you use trash in your work?

I get a lot of inspiration from garbage that I find … something that I saw on the side of the road and was so inspired that I had to stop the car and get it and put it in the trunk. There is something that is free that is appealing to me, for one.

And it’s just sometimes very intriguing and exciting to see what these objects have become. And so I get them up and then make up my own stories about them.

I started collage as an undergraduate. I worked for the school paper, making cartoons and that was a great thing for me to go through because I had to make them quick. I started to experiment with collage and building up the surfaces of my drawings sometimes subtly where you would not know that something had been collaged on unless you investigated a little bit further. And I think majoring as printmaker helped me learn how to do that.

I have scraps and scraps that are the remains of paintings that I cut up and set aside. I have piles and piles of these colorful scraps. Some made out of felt, some have paint on them. I wanted to make a body of work that dealt with the things that I am finding on the studio floor and made all these anagrams out of that on big bands of felt like giant rugs.

He created a carton strip called the “Mound” which is a hybrid creature comprising characteristics of animal and vegetable life. They only communicate

With bursts of color and symbols.

Selected Solo Exhibitions: -

- 2009 - Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle.

2009 - Dunn and Brown Contemporary, Dallas, Texas

2008 - “FEAR” James Cohan Gallery, New York

2008 - Galleria Marabini, Bologna, Italy

2008 - Institute for Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

2007 - “ The Wayward Thinker” The Fruitmarket, Edinburg, Scotland

2006 - ”In the Bestian Room” James Cohan Gallery , New York

2005 - ”St. Sesom and the Cult of Color” Dunn and Brown Contemporary, Dallas Texas

2003 -“Moments in Mounds History” Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

2003 - “ It came from the Studio floor” Dunn and Brown Contemporary, Dallas, TX

2003 - ”For a Floor of Flora” James Cohan Gallery, New York, NY

2001 - “The Life and Death f # 1” - Contemporary Museum of Art, Houston, Texas

` - 2001 - Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Forth Worth , Texas

- 2001 - Fine Arts Association at the Jones Center for Contemporary Art, Austin, Texas.

“ Braque integrated the first collage in art. Leaving Arles where he had been painting with Picasso, Braque saw in the windows of a hardware store, a wallpaper with a “cane” design. He bought the roll and started using it in his paintings. Picasso was damned he did not do it first!”.

References: - PBS Documentary: Art in the Twenty-First Century

- “ME A MOUND” & SESOM (MOSES spelled backward).