Artist Statement

For this project, I have taken pre-owned doors and focused on repurposing them to tell land management and environmental histories. I am doing this through the lenses of different U.S. National Parks. I have researched four major parks all rich with history, both problematic and exemplary. The first is The Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, located in southern Colorado. The second park is, histories first declared National Park, Yellowstone, located principally in Wyoming, but reaching states such as southern Montana and part of Idaho. I also intend on creating work including Zion National Park, In Utah, and finally, Acadia National Park in Maine.

In the fall of 2020, I went on a cross-country trip with a friend. Venturing out after spending 6 months in quarantine and continuing college amid a global pandemic the trip has become a pivotal time in my life. I learned a new appreciation for nature, sustainability, and the history of US National Parks. My art is a way I can think through a problem, show my devotion to researching and acting on that problem, and communicating it to others the best way I know-how.

Geographically, this project includes parks from all over the country but also ones with different ecosystems and terrain. Upon doing research on the land and National Parks services at large, I found I could not ignore the problematic bills and laws put in place. As well as the land we preserve being land we have taken and land we may not be preserving as well as those native to it could have. Over the years bills have been passed and armies have travelled through many of these parks. I decided I will be creating a painted-on layer of all these findings. The landscape will be etched into the door, as a permanent altering of the door. Each bill and anthropocentric part of the park's history will be painted on top of that as it takes over the background while being strategically placed.

Hannah Schaub

About the Artist

Born and raised in Mahwah, New Jersey, Hannah Schaub grew up doodling on her hands or the furniture in her room and most memorably getting scolded by teachers for drawing out her school notes instead of writing them. Hannah has loved art and the creative process for as long as she can remember. She has always viewed art as the solution to a problem, where ideas come to a resolution. Art has become Hannah’s universal language. Throughout her art career, she has combined traditional mediums such as acrylic paints, color pencils, and markers. She has also recently found herself interested in the repurposing of various discarded construction materials and found household objects and using them as the mediums she creates on. She finds that she cannot stick to one medium for long and often finds herself interested in trying something new right in the middle of completing her current projects. Hannah will be graduating this spring from Loyola University Maryland with an interdisciplinary degree in Communications and Studio Arts, specializing in Advertising, and a minor in Innovation and Entrepreneurship.