“Now this is now.”  The phrase, quoted from author David Foster Wallace, was featured prominently in Hanna Pettyjohn’s earlier show, The American Sweet (2009).  Now, with Bundle, Pettjohn propels the continued ascension of this thought (mantra), while also marking a departure from her previous work. Beyond the logistical difference of producing the work in Texas for the first time rather than Manila, there is a shift in the larger tone.

The American Sweet documented experiences of working and visiting family in Texas through portraits in which the subjects wore dust masks.  Paintings of sterile interiors and street scenes further conveyed a brooding disconnection with the setting and its inhabitants.  With Year of Glad (2010), paintings of her maternal and paternal grandparents as well as aerial maps of their distant homes served as a means of bridging Pettyjohn’s perceptions of the Philippines, America and their dueling positions in her family’s history, as vividly portrayed by the criss-crossing wooden arrows littered throughout the four chambers of the show.
If Year of Glad was a bridge, then perhaps Few and Far Between (2011) signaled an acceptance of sorts; rugged landscapes catalogued momentary impressions from a road trip during a subsequent visit to America that year.  No inference of context or narrative seemed intended, merely an appreciation of pure representations of the world as it is.

Bundle finds Hanna Pettyjohn returning to large scale portraits in close-up. Unlike her previous works in this format, the faces are unobscured by mask or mist.  Rather, they are enveloped by disparate cuts of cloth and clothing.  Each sideways glance is equal parts majestic and mundane.  Every facial imperfection or stray hair is accompanid by a fold or flap of random fabric.

Perhaps echoing the symmetry of the four chambers of Year of Glad, each portrait was restaged with the same materials, sans “subject.”  The fine detail of each texture and pattern depicts a sense of comfort; faded tones of grey and blue give way to warmer hues.  The climate changes.  Absent is the clean sparseness of earlier reflections on America, replaced by a frenetic clutter that more aptly recalls the crowded chaos of Manila.

Whether object or action, the title evokes the life of a moment, full of fleeting sensations, imperceptible in their abundance.  This is an investigation not of the ephemeral past but the material present.  Each swath gives its own tactile testimony to both appearance and function.  In Bundle, Hanna Pettyjohn captures the creature comforts that compose a physical truth, simple and concise and, thanks to these paintings, now lasting.

Words by Matthew Jones

Through early works in wax and clay, Hanna Pettyjohn affirmed a lasting transfixion with the tangible and immediate. Forms that carry a moment’s touch tell the story of themselves. In layering oil on canvas, she maintains a textural basis to her subject matter, with no context of history or society to obstruct the personal aspect of her works.