Have you ever been inspired by the ordinary? Will Hanlon was holding a pushpin when inspiration struck. Hanlon was hanging up a Pokemon poster with his son when he realized that they could put the poster on corkboard and that the pushpins were the same colors as the Pokemon, so they could create a three-dimensional effect of the Pokemon on the wall. What seemed like a small chore of putting up a wall hanging became a process of making a piece of art and a great pastime to spend with his son to boot, sitting elbow-to-elbow over a period of three months, pushing pins into the Pokemon poster.
Hanlon has taken that idea and expanded upon it by making his own unique pushpin art designs. His art consists of objet trouve as the French would say, taking found objects and making it into something aesthetically pleasing.
The first time I took a visit to Hanlon’s loft was several years ago during the Peekskill Arts Alliances’s annual “Open Studios” event in 2018, which is the same year Hanlon moved to Peekskill. In lieu of a traditional business card, Hanlon had constructed bits of push pins posted into small square shaped foam board, (foam board is mainly what he uses for his art) with his name and contact info underneath.
“What really, really sealed the deal,” Hanlon says of finding, working, and showing in his art loft, is when I got to the top of those steps over there, like you just did and you turn the corner and you see the space and it’s like, of course, this is where I need to live.”
The space is now covered with his artwork of course, in which he uses push pins and other found objects such as hair ties, q-tips dipped in paint, pipe cleaners, and paper clips.
Hanlon is also a computer systems designer by trade, and it’s easy to see the parallels between what he does as a computer scientist and what he does for his art. In both regards he is creating something out of nothing in an analytical way. In fact, Hanlon is a pioneer in creating computer systems that didn’t exist before, just like his art creations.
“Yeah, so that’s been a really good, like a symbiotic, situation for me there that I could have a profession that I’m absolutely passionate about. Uh, and I was at the right place at the right time having a computer degree at the age of the computer, (the birth of it) in a lot of ways…I literally designed new languages…So a lot of my work in the eighties and nineties was really in the languages that people use to interface with computers. So, imagine writing the language for Shakespeare to write a sonnet. Yeah. He’s still Shakespeare. He’s still writing it up, but he’s using the words that I gave him to use.
It’s actually making it into a thing…you know, sometimes you get a jigsaw puzzle for someone as a gift, and then they sit and they put it together and then it’s a thing…you know, so same sort of thing.” Says Hanlon.
I comment on the fact that what Hanlon does with computers, as well as with his art, is very unique and he replies,
“It is both the, no one’s done this before creativity, but with the tools and the rather exacting, unflinching tools, if you’re off by a millimeter, it shows; if you’re off by a comma or an I should be an A, then the whole thing blows up.”
Hanlon has an overarching theme in which everything he does has elements of “order and chaos.”
“You know, every day is everyone’s balancing out what is orderly, and what is chaotic. And now some people live in the orderly world and never come out. Some people live in the chaotic world and never come out. It’s a spectrum…Relationships can be very chaotic and it can be very ordinary and there’s that balance.”
Hanlon feels compelled to do the work that he does.
“If I wasn’t compelled, I’d stay in a fetal position under my covers all day.” Says Hanlon.
Hanlon does envision that in five years he’ll be able to focus more on the business side of his art, but “I’ll still be doing the bat-shit crazy stuff creatively that I do everyday”, says Hanlon with a contented grin.
All in all, life is looking pretty good for Hanlon in Peekskill. He’s found many new friends, he’s got a killer bachelor pad/art loft, and he can afford to make his art and do it well.
Hanlon will be showing next at the Hendrick Hudson Library, with an opening reception on February 20thfrom 2-4 pm, and at the Yonkers Riverfront Gallery until March 3rd. Give Hanlon a call at (914) 930-7367 for more specific dates and times.