Congratulations to Hannah Secord Wade on her inclusion in Meet Me in The Forest at the Cafesjian Art Trust Museum, which will be on view through February 27, 2027.

“Meet Me in the Forest invites you into the forests, gardens, and natural worlds artists create—places that hold mystery, mythology, and history. The exhibition foregrounds the complex and layered relationships between nature and humankind. Natural worlds are main characters in these stories, places where transcendent beauty, existential danger, and humanity converge and collide.

Meet Me in the Forest features twenty-one contemporary works of art across media, including paintings, textiles, mixed-media, glass, ceramics, photography, and installations. Drawing upon the CAT’s collection, new exciting acquisitions, and important regional and national loans, the exhibition includes work by leading artists Carrie Mae Weems, Ebony G. Patterson, and Ana Mendieta, alongside work by other nationally recognized artists and emerging new talent.

Meet Me in the Forest is organized by the Cafesjian Art Trust Museum’s Jill Ahlberg Yohe, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and Linnea Seidling, Assistant Curator of Glass. The CAT expresses gratitude to the Des Moines Art Center, Farnsworth Art Museum, Walker Art Center, Bockley Gallery, and Gladstone Gallery for generously lending works of art to the exhibition.”

Artists Featured: Christina Bothwell, Kate Clements, Inka Essenhigh, Pao Houa Her, Mayme Kratz, Kelly Sinnapah Mary, Ana Mendieta, Lori Nix Ebony G. Patterson, Erica Rosenfeld, Amanda Michelle Smith, Paul Stankard, Hannah Secord Wade, Carrie Mae Weems, Nancy Wissemann-Widrig, Emma Wood, Hiroshi Yamano

Underground is part of the Interlude series, which came from a place of dark stillness, where any movement is slow and dreamlike. Interlude follows the overarching cycle of my work, with a perpetual containment and release of landscape, but this time with a certain heaviness. Naming the series “Interlude” was both a hope that this weight would pass, and a reference to a theater play, with the interlude as a short skit between acts, usually a somewhat comical diversion. I often incorporate a sense of unreality, absurdity, or humor in my work as a way to both interrupt beauty, and to acknowledge the folly of remaining in a never-ending cycle.
Within a series cycle, each individual piece is often centered on a specific concern or struggle. This particular work visually references Lucas Arts games from the 90s, as I began to consider virtual worlds as a safer space, and imagined a landscape that would have a similar sense of unreality, but be emptied of all characters and pre-determined action. Underground is both a containment of landscape in a subterranean cavern, and an opportunity for movement, with a calm river serving as either a way out, or a way to travel deeper. The scene is intended to have an undetermined narrative, that could be calming and enticing, or somewhat dangerous.

-Hannah Secord Wade

Hannah Secord Wade, Underground, 2022, acrylic on linen, 60 x 48 inches. Collection of the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine. Museum purchase, Lynne Drexler Acquisition Fund, 2022.31. Photos courtesy of Cafesjian Art Trust Museum.

Hannah Secord Wade at The Cafesjian Art Trust Museum