Reviewing, revisiting, and rethinking: The constant repetition of the ordinary weaves itself through my paintings, drawings, collages, and prints, playing on a loop. Using primarily oil paint, I work to preserve the everyday, the moments around the monumental. My biggest task lies in pinning down each small moment the way one would pin down a butterfly. I collect old photographs and postcards, marrying the subjects into my compositions using layers of glaze and impasto paint to conceal and reveal imagery and motifs throughout the work. People and places from found imagery fuse with my own memories to create an uncanny somewhere on the razor's edge of reality, falsehoods and truths melded together- invented snapshots telling tall tales. I am captivated by constructed spaces, hazy and ambiguous; they are each real to me, whether places I have visited and captured, or simply an instant witnessed in a fever dream. My work is an uncovering, the truths that we bury wrapped in the guise of the unassuming. I create because I must. I paint until the painting makes sense, and I cannot stop until it does. Each piece slowly revealed, a new discovery on an archaeological dig.
About the Artist
About the Artist
Photo by Nate Rouse
Allison Bogard Hall is an interdisciplinary artist and educator living and working in Cleveland, Ohio. Hall earned her BFA in Painting and Literary Studies from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2014, and has since been expanding her work through multiple mediums such as printmaking, installation, found object sculpture, and darkroom photography. Her pieces are often autobiographical and heavily influenced by current events, found imagery, and literature. As an exhibiting artist, Hall has had two solo exhibitions in the North East Ohio area since 2021, and is a recipient of the CAN Triennial Exhibition Prize (2022). In addition to solo exhibitions, Hall has also shown work in group shows in Maine, Philadelphia, and throughout the Midwest. In Spring of 2024, Hall co-founded the publishing press BHB press with fellow artist Sam R. Butler. Together, Butler and Hall applied for and were awarded an Urgent Art Fund grant administered by SPACES and supported by residents of Cuyahoga County + Assembly for the Arts through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. When Hall is not busy making work out of her studio at the Screw Factory in Lakewood, Ohio, she is out hiking with her partner and son or working as a Studio Manager at the Cleveland Institute of Art. For information on recent shows or commissions, please email or connect with her on Instagram @allison.bogard.hall.
Artist Statement
Photo by Matthew Bogard
Photo by Matthew Bogard