Join us for a talk with Ann Hamilton, the artist behind Guestsâan installation of 42 large-scale, puppet-like figures suspended beneath Seattleâs Overlook Walk. Inspired by buoyant motion and the liminal space between land and sea, Guests bridges abstraction and presence, inviting viewers to imagine untold stories in the threshold between light and shadow, street and water.
During this talk, Hamilton will discuss her creative process, the evolution of Guests, and how public art can animate urban space and foster community engagement. Hear how her work responds to place and material, drawing on Seattleâs waterfront and the interplay of environment, movement, and perception.
Guests is a public artwork commissioned by Seattleâs Office of the Waterfront & Civic Projects and the Office of Arts & Culture.
About the Artist
Ann Hamilton is a visual artist internationally recognized for her large-scale multimedia installations, public projects, and performance collaborations. Responsive to the contingencies of the sites where she works, her recurring formsâcloth, texts spoken and written, animals, and people suspended or in motionâimmerse viewers in an atmosphere both visceral and literary, individual and collective, animate and inanimate, silent and spoken.
Born in Lima, Ohio, in 1956, Ann Hamilton received a BFA in textile design from the University of Kansas in 1979 and an MFA in sculpture from the Yale School of Art in 1985. From 1985 to 1991, she taught on the faculty of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Hamilton has served on the faculty of The Ohio State University since 2001, where she is a Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Department of Art.
Among her many honors, Hamilton has been the recipient of the National Medal of the Arts, Heinz Award, MacArthur Fellowship, United States Artists Fellowship, NEA Visual Arts Fellowship, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture, and the Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. She represented the United States in the 1991 Sao Paulo Bienal and the 1999 Venice Biennale. She currently serves as a board member to The Wexner Center of the Arts, The American Academy in Rome, United States Artists, and The American Academy of Arts and Letters.