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Hatcher Collection
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The Collected Works of Donna May Hatcher
Below, you will find various bodies of work ranging in materials, subject matter and process. Donna Hatcher explored painting, printmaking, drawing, ceramics, blown, stained and fused glass, sculpture, assemblage, mixed media and installation. She worked in materials that included not only glass, , bronze, aluminum, and found objects and materials, but also clay, oil and acrylic on canvas, panel, charcoal, graphite and ink paper. She was a prolific artist and the Donna Hatcher Art Collection reflects her life’s work dating from 1986, the year she graduated from high school, throughout her early college days at the University of Georgia, graduate studies at Cornell, up to her time as a Professor of Art at Abraham Baldwin College and into 2020.
Blown Glass
Much of Hatcher’s blown glass works were created in Cardona, Italy, and New York. Her glass vessels and bowls range from 8 to 24 inches in height. They are dramatic, bold and colorful, and meant to be viewed in the round (from all sides).
Hearts are a reoccurring motif found throughout the many works of Donna May Hatcher. Her blown glass hearts are intricate, colorful, and, symbolic, expressing the vulnerability of the human heart through the fragile properties of the material used. She loved and cared so deeply for others, and cherished all living things; never meeting a stranger. Her spirit lives on, flowing like the hot glass used to form each one of her unique and delicate blown glass hearts.
Eufala and Later Paintings
The experience remained Hatcher’s greatest teacher. Through travel, scholarship, teaching, and creating, she continued to grow. Painting at Eufaula lake, making notes with a 14-megapixel camera, creating “straight abstraction” photography, creating self-portraits everywhere she would go, and resisting the urge to be like Gauguin in a retreat, she felt that she was no longer a dinosaur in the age of digitization. Her paintings are a reflection of her travels and her reaction to the digital age.
Hatcher’s works on paper consists of drawings, collages, water based media, and prints including but not limited to the lithography, silkscreen and intaglio process. Much of her prints, drawings and watercolors on paper were completed during her undergraduate and graduate studies held at the University of Georgia and Cornell University.
Donna Hatcher enjoyed working on installations and combining imagery to work together to create a larger impact. This collection of works includes her mosaic tiles she glazed, fired, and installed on the porch of her Hatcher Hill residence in Baconton, GA. She also cut steel on other metal to form the shapes of animals, boots, angels, and other beloved imagery. Her house in Tifton, where lived while teaching at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, is covered in many of the metal shapes. Included also in this collection are just a few remaining ceramic forms both functional bowls and vessels, as well as a few non-functional, content-driven forms.
Fused Glass Crowned Heads, Stained & Other Glass
These whimsical fused glassworks are filled with delightful repeated icons and hidden meaning. The simplified, abstract face is found repeatedly and throughout her bodies of works. It is something she explored in many different mediums, extending from paintings, glass, aluminum, clay, plaster, mixed media, and found objects.
The crowned head appears throughout Hatcher’s artwork in a variety of media. They are commanding, soulful, and are abstracted or distorted through exaggerated shapes, drips, and washes of muted and contrasting colorful paint.
While at the University of Georgia and Cornell University, Hatcher explored painting in oil, water based media, mixed media and particularly enjoyed painting the figure and the narrative. She painted on anything from wood, found objects, paper bags, and cardboard, to canvas and even linen.
Donna Hatcher enjoyed working on installations and combining imagery to work together to create a larger impact and foster collaboration. This collection of work includes her mosaic tiles she glazed, fired, and installed on the porch of her Hatcher Hill residence in Baconton, GA. She also cut steel on other metal to form the shapes of animals, boots, angels, and other beloved imagery installed along the exterior of the house she owned on Alder Street in Tifton, Ga.
The main project Donna Hatcher spent a majority of her time working on, for the past few years, up to just before her passing, was the historic preservation of Bessie Tift Chapel. Located in Tifton, Ga., she intended to re-purpose the chapel as an art studio. The church was in disrepair when she purchased the circa 1893 structure, but with research, hard work, and help from family members and friends, it began to take shape. The Bessie Tift Chapel has been bequeathed by Donna to Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, Georgia.
Assemblages and Mixed Media
Hatcher repurposed items most people would throw away and would turn them into colorful pieces of artwork. Social practice as art interested her greatly. In collaboration, she would make, understand and experience art that “healed” individuals and communities. Hatcher focused on creating multi-media site-specific installations, and within her installations, she would orchestrate paintings, drawings, sculptures, and natural matter, etc., 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.
Hatcher’s bronze, aluminum and clay sculptures are mostly figurative, abstract, and feel as if they have been excavated from the earth. They are full of texture with evidence of process, and technique. Bits of patina and plaster can be found throughout cavities and ridges of various forms.
Much of Hatcher’s photography and especially her digital photography/prints were created during her travels to Brazil, and other locations. She had many comments that she was working towards embracing the digital age and felt it important to explore digital photography and photo manipulation.
Hatcher collected many works from other artists, former professors and teachers, and even students. Works range from prints and drawings to paintings, mixed media, and sculpture. Several are signed and numbered.
