Symbiosis and Interspecies Collaborations | Ladislav Hanka



Exhibition & Events
Lad Hanka
July 10 - August 21, 2021
Meet the Artist Event: Sat., July 17, 2021
Virtual Artist Talk: Wed. July 21, 2021, register HERE
Generous support from Rich Sneary and Jon & Barb Whitney.
Artist Bio
Ladislav Hanka currently resides in Kalamazoo, MI. He was born in 1952 in an ethnic enclave of Cedar Rapids, Iowa as the son of recent exiles of Stalinist Czechoslovakia. He describes himself as a printmaker, draftsman and book artist. Ladislav has a long standing interest in the natural world and he received a BA in Biology and Liberal Arts and an MS in Zoology. In 1979 Ladislav had a private apprenticeship with Jindra Schmidt, a master engraver of Stamps and Currency in Prague. This pivotal experience was followed by an MFA in printmaking from Western Michigan University in 1981.
Ladislav has exhibited nationally and internationally. His work appears in over 60 public collections including but not limited to: the National Park Service - Isle Royale National Park Headquarters, the Fogg Museum of Art at Harvard, The New York Public Library, the Library of Congress in Washington DC, The National Museum in Prague.
Artist Statement
Ladislav states:
"I am a beekeeper and an artist - a member of two ancient brotherhoods. When I draw pictures, I feel in touch with creation and fully alive. When I open a hive, it is to the sound of 30,000 buzzing creatures, each with a venom-filled stinger, getting increasingly disturbed as I reach in and pull out frame after frame of their winter food stores and their babies, to examine them and manage the hive. In both of these callings, as artist and as keeper of the bees, I am entering worlds that are primordial – at once alluring and mystic – and of course, potentially dangerous.