Jane Hammond - Spells and Incantations
American, b.1950
Spells and Incantations, 2008
Color 3-D lithograph with silkscreen, chine colle and gold leaf, 60.5 x 18.85 inches
Edition of 45
Shark's Ink
08.001

Gift of Kathleen J. Crispell (LSA '67) and Thomas S. Porter (MBA '67)

Since 1988 Jane Hammond has worked with a collection of 276 images compiled from a wide variety of sources, including manuals, children's books, books on magic and puppetry, medical journals, technical illustrations, matchbook covers, labels, charts and maps. She recombines the elements of this lexicon to create new images in the form of paintings, drawings, and prints.

Hammond's work is in many public collections including: The Art Institute of Chicago; La Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Museum of Modern Art, New York City; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Whitney Museum and many others.

Spells and Incantations is a three-dimensional print assembled from twenty-six individual lithographic elements. Hammond describes her inspiration for the print: "This past Summer I was dreaming a lot about my grandmother. I spent much of my childhood with her and she spent much of her childhood in Egypt. I grew up around stories, photographs and objects from this faraway place. I have a strong interest in the relationship between pictures and writing. I have wanted to make an Egyptian-based piece for sometime using my lexicon of found images in a hieroglyphic context. I think of this piece as an amulet for propitious things in the journey of this life and beyond."