We recently connected with Maddie Hinrichs and have shared our conversation below.
Maddie, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
My most intense and meaningful project I’ve done to date is the solo show I just had at the Lux Center for the Arts in Lincoln, Nebraska. The show’s title was “I See Myself in You” which perfectly encapsulated the idea of the show. The idea for this series of work started about a year and a half ago. I was in graduate school at SUNY Albany and I painted my first reflection self portrait. I had stayed away from painting figures for years, preferring to paint and embroider spaces, but in January 2022 I painted my silhouetted reflection the showed up in the glass holding a painting made by my grandma. This piece not only led to my interest in reflection, but also illusion, deep space, and how I perceived a painting. Shortly after I made this painting I began introducing embroidery into the same surface as my painting. My reflection series continued, and I began to form a language to this series. I always embroidered the silhouette and I had to include the frame of whatever was being reflected. After I graduated with my MFA, I got into an artist residency at the Lux which allowed me to continue work on my series. In total, I produced 8 self reflected works for my solo show, and included three pieces that were more centered around space.
Maddie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I was born in Lincoln, Nebraska and got my BFA at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2019. I took a year off before going to SUNY-Albany for my MFA and graduated in 2022. I wanted to stay very active in my practice so I started applying to residences that were at least a year long so I could move to any location. The Lux Center for the Arts in Lincoln, Nebraska accepted me as an artist in residence and this June I renewed my contract to stay another year with them. While in graduate school, I married my painting and embroidery practices into one, letting both mediums rest on the same surface. I do this subtly, and try to color match the paint and textile enough for the different surface textures to not be apparent at first.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I got accepted into graduate school in 2020, and moved to New York in the middle of the pandemic. While I still had a studio to go to, I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t see anyone face to face, and I was in an entirely new state that I had never visited. It was very hard to connect with other people in my program, but I tried to make the best out of it. I basically lived in my studio, determined to use the time I had to focus entirely on my work. I researched and pushed myself and every day I felt like a was out of my comfort zone but I just kept going. The second year of my program, I got to finally meet many of my fellow students, and most of the faculty face to face. We all felt bonded, even though we had mostly just seen each other on Zoom up to that point. At the end of my degree, my work paid off and I received the MFA Thesis Award.
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
I wish a lot more people talked about the finance side of being an artist. I also wish I wasn’t so tongue-tied around visiting artists when they came to the universities I attended. No one gave me resources for these kinds of things, and for some reason it’s taboo to ask about the realities of being an artist in the real world. I’ve found a lot of resources for help with finding residencies, grants, open calls, etc– Artwork Archive, Creative Capital, and Artist Communities are the first three that come to mind. It’s my hope going forward that I’m able to share resources and experience with other emerging artists and finally answer some of these questions that everyone needs answered. 
Contact Info:
- Website: maddiehinrichsart.com
- Instagram: mp.hinrichs