Debra Broz, Artist

Source link here. 

Annie Woodford, Artist

See more on Woodford's website. Link here.

What Is A Hybrid? Art Today, Walker Art Center

Hybrid Art Forms
What is a hybrid?
A hybrid means something of mixed origin or composition that adds variety or complexity to a system. In science, a hybrid is the offspring of genetically dissimilar plants or animals, especially produced by breeding or grafting different varieties or species. In language, a hybrid word is one whose elements are derived from different languages. In an automobile, a hybrid combines an electric motor with a gasoline engine.

Given these definitions of the word hybrid, what would it mean to make a hybrid art form?

In art forms, hybridity could mean the blurring of traditional distinct boundaries between artistic media such as painting, sculpture, film, performance, architecture, and dance. It also can mean cross-breeding art-making with other disciplines, such as natural and physical science, industry, technology, literature, popular culture, or philosophy. Hybrid art forms expand the possibilities for experimentation and innovation in contemporary art.

Today’s artists are free to make art with whatever material or technique they can imagine. This freedom creates new opportunities to express ideas and concepts. It also opens up a number of challenges, choices, and decisions for artists:
Should I work to master a traditional art form or should I work to create innovative new art forms? Or should I do both?
Should I experiment with materials that are industrial or outside the scope of my studio if those materials seem to be the best way to express my artistic goals?
How can I define myself as an artist if I am shifting, combining, and recombining techniques from inside and outside the worlds of art?
Blurring boundaries, breaking rules, and creating hybrids occupies much artistic work today. However, making meaning in art—whatever tools, materials, or techniques are used—remains central to artistic practice. It is important for viewers to keep this in mind as they explore innovative art today.

Link here for more discussions from the Walker.

Martin Puryear, Artist

The manner in which Puryear uses line, shape, repetition, form can be useful when composing your hybrid forms. Link here to see more of Puryear's work.

Patricia Piccini, Artist

How does Piccini's work demonstrate hybrid form?

Link here to see more of Piccini's work on her website.

A sample of Piccini's artist statement:
"In 1996 I was drawing in medical museums, meticulous pencil renderings of old specimens, pathologies and aberrations. My interest was in the way that the discipline and technology of medicine constructs our ideas of the normal and the natural. I was fascinated by these ideas and happy with the work but I was concerned that the particular representational technology that I was employing to discuss these issues was somehow anachronistic. Increasingly, the ideas I was dealing with revolved around genetic mapping and manipulation, body imaging technologies and media culture. If the aim of my work was to look at the increasing impact of medical and media technologies on the body, then I wanted the work to engage with contemporary technologies on a formal level...Currently, my deep interest is in the status of 'the natural', which to me is a political question, grounded in lived experience. I am interested in how our understanding of the natural has shifted. I am interested in what is natural now; w what might constitute the nature (as in natural habitat) of the contemporary, movie watching, in-vitro fertilised mall-rat. As such I am interested in an expanded, hybrid nature rather than the purist 'return to Eden' concept that is usually opposed to the artificial." Full artist statement on website. Link here.

Elitism and Pop Culture, Hybrid Sculpture by Lee Tang

In his Manga Ormolu series Tang enters the dialogue on contemporary culture, technology and globalization through a fabricated relationship between ceramic tradition (using the form of Chinese Ming dynasty vessels) and techno-Pop Art. The futuristic update of the Ming vessels in this series recalls 18th century French gilded ormolu, where historic Chinese vessels were transformed into curiosity pieces for aristocrats. But here, robotic prosthetics inspired by anime and manga subvert elitism with the accessibility of popular culture. Link here for more.

Hybrid Design Applied To The Figure

The first image you see is the Venus of Willendorf, a small stone carving (about 4" in height). Dates to around 22,000 BCE. "The painting and carvings of the Neolithic period introduce themes into art that are still present in many cultures. Animals and humans still constituted a majority of the subjects that were represented, but they were often shown juxtaposed in such a way as to suggest that they coexisted in the same entity, either as a new, HYBRID form, or as a kind of spiritual guardian. Totems, or animal Gods, exist today in the religions of some native cultures, and are a recurrent theme in art everywhere." From Portrait History. Link here for more information.


Click here for a video that discusses how human proportions are manipulated.

Above Image, Tattooed Doll I by Michele Oka Doner. Link here.