hannah cole

Carol, I wanted to talk about how intrepid, deeply authentic, provocative and sometimes outrageously funny your work has been all these years and how daring and courageous you are in your personal expression. I just remembered your piece in “The Visible Vagina” show in 2010 titled Back into the Womb where you built a giant Vagina out of a play tent, with red satin, lace, velour, rubber, and you invited people to crawl in & try a pacifier.
I think back to when we met at lunch in 1994, when I was visiting UNC in Greensboro & having an exhibition at the Weatherspoon Museum. I found out that you had asked Ruth Beesch the Director, to be invited to that lunch in order to meet me, because I was one of those artists from Cindy Nemser’s book Art Talk; Interviews with Women Artists, from way back 20 years before who had identified all my head sculptures as self portraits and made you reflect on yourself “If she can do it, I can do it too”. It was like taking a dare & giving yourself permission to make your own revelatory imagery. It was a memorable lunch because you were so generous in describing your own artistic trajectory in the most open and profoundly honest way.