Maren Hassinger

I felt that Maren Hassinger’s artwork was beautiful and was definitely thought provoking as it made me question a lot of how society functions. My favorite piece was her exhibit labeled “Love”. When she shared some pictures of this exhibit during her presentation, I questioned why anyone would be interested in viewing pink plastic bags on a wall. As she briefly discussed the meaning of this piece, I realized that the pink bags were filled with the breaths from different types of people. This just goes to show that regardless of skin color, race, religion, sex, and/or financial standing, that humans all exhale the same air. To implement this as a piece of artwork is really inspiring and almost allows the person who observed it to feel good. 

The one aspect of her presentation that did not appeal to me as much was when she mentioned that she had picked up all of the trash in one area of a park and then decided to place pink colored trash in the same area. She explained that this led to a higher percentage of people picking up the trash because the color pink was more noticeable compared to regular colored trash. I see the point she is trying to make regarding trash and the importance of litter, however I did not think it was necessary to first pick up trash, to only drop it on the ground again. This leads me to question if there are other forms of expressing the importance of litter through different types of artworks?

Maren Hassinger’s "Love"  

I feel that her artwork fits into the discussions that we have in class because just like women in the middle ages who painted or sculpted to portray an importance message, Maren Hassinger also has the same idea when creating her artwork.