“Experience remains my greatest teacher.  Through travel, scholarship, teaching and creating, I grow..”

Biography

Donna Hatcher was a South Georgia Artist resonating a resilient, and innovative spirit and work ethic. It is this drive that defined her attitude and artistic core, and fueled her desire to push herself through the many trials of life.

Transformative moments are captured in her work ranging from two-dimensional paintings to multi-media site specific installations. Within each installation, paintings, drawings, and sculptures, etc., natural matter is orchestrated, in order to create an environment where one can contemplate. Native American philosophies, boundaries, oppression, misogyny, addiction, and mortal fragility have been central issues of various installations, reflecting a form of primordial and residual existence.

Hatcher was originally from Lester, GA, and valedictorian of Westwood High in Camilla Georgia. She was awarded a BFA in Fine Art from the University of Georgia, Cum laude, and received an MFA in Fine Art from Cornell University.

Hatcher won numerous grants, residencies and awards including The W. Bruce and Rosalyn Ray Donaldson Award for Teaching Excellence and The Travel Award from Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College as well as a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship awarded by Nine University and College International Studies Consortium of Georgia at Columbus State University, Columbus, Georgia.

Hatcher’s installations of sculptures, paintings, drawings, glass, and mixed media works have been shown in Europe, New York, and extensively in Georgia.  Her works are in private collections throughout the United States.

For the past five years, she had focused primarily on the historic preservation and renovation of the Bessie Tift Chapel in Tifton where she planned to utilize the Carpenter’s Gothic architecture as an art studio and gallery.

Hatcher was a professor of art at Abraham Baldwin College for almost twenty years.

Abraham Baldwin Professor Grapples with Injuries and Recovery in New Exhibit

Article in the Tifton Gazette, March 24th, 2019

The gallery quickly became packed with professors, students, and visitors from the surrounding counties who came to see “Another Woman’s Treasure: A Retrospective.”

One of the most memorable exhibition’s of Hatcher’s work consisted of mixed media, paintings, glass-blown vases, and sculptures. The collection of art from Hatcher not only showed off how vast her skills and talents range, but also tells the story about challenges and obstacles she had to overcome to get where she is today.

As a first-generation college graduate, Hatcher earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the University of Georgia, and a master’s degree in painting from Cornell University. Briefly after starting work at ABAC, Hatcher survived a massive car wreck with two semi-trucks, leaving her pick-up truck totaled. Trial and tribulations followed when she had to learn how to walk and understand sounds again. As if the wreck hadn’t taken enough from her, she lost some of her artistic abilities that she perfected through her journey as an artist and student.

One of the most challenging skills she re-learned is glass blowing. Before the wreck, Hatcher perfected the craft of glass blowing and would often blow vases that were as big as two feet long. It took years for her to recover. “I realized it wasn’t the skills that I lost with my hands, it was the skills that I lost with my mind,” said Hatcher. Eventually, Hatcher gained enough of her skills back that she can create vases up to 8-10 inches long. She can’t create the same sized vases she could before the wreck, but she proved she still has the talent with a collection of four vases titled “Relationships.” “Relationships” featured vases with odd shapes and unique designs. The vases didn’t stand up right like normal, instead they leaned over to the side, without falling over. “From making this, I made the most beautiful piece in my mind,” Hatcher said. “When you put different glasses together like relationships, some of them might melt slow, some of them might melt fast,” she said. “Then you got this big mess you’re trying to take on so you can create meaning for your life and other people’s life.”

Hatcher repurposes the stuff most people would throw away and turns it into colorful pieces of artwork. The work titled “Self Portrait #2,” used a pair of latex gloves covered with a hardening residue for preservation. “That’s me, those are my hands you see there,” said Hatcher. “My personal art is always related to my travels and to the students I teach,” said Hatcher “Sometimes something they’ve thrown away I’ll claim it and then incorporate it into one of my collages.” “Her work is very textural and makes me want to touch it,” said Sandra Giles, an English professor at ABAC. “Her work often uses reclaimed items that usually would be considered garbage. That says a lot about our culture and what we value, or don’t value, or what we need to survive.” The garbage patches in the oceans with islands of plastic gave Hatcher the desire to make something beautiful and symbolic through creating a piece of art from single use plastics.

After months of planning brainstorming, she created a chandelier out of chicken wire, plastic bottles and LED lights. A chandelier piece is titled after the exhibit, “Another Woman’s Treasure.” The warm and cool LED lights laid behind the plastic bottles, giving the piece an illuminating light display.

The next big project that Hatcher has planned is renovating and restoring Tifton’s oldest church, formerly known as the Bessie Tift Church. Her idea is to turn this into her personal art studio and community outreach project. The property came into her ownership after purchasing it from the county sale at the end of the year. Nobody else wanted this church, so Hatcher purchased it so she could turn something abandoned into a place for creativity.

“Donna Hatcher is the person who finds that part within you, that helps you connect with your creative self to what you were born to do,” said Susan Roe, ABAC’s fine arts department head and professor of voice. “She can find a gift inside of you that you didn’t know you had.”