Work in progress: 2013 Greenfield Prize commission goes on display at The Ringling

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Two decades of creating a personal and artistic narrative biography that has played out in collage, prints, paintings, cartoons, even ballet, comes together next week in an exhibit at The Ringling Museum by Houston-based artist Trenton Doyle Hancock, winner of the 2013 Greenfield Prize.

"EMIT: What the Bringback Brought" is the fulfillment of the $30,000 Greenfield Prize commission; the opening at The Ringling coincides with the Greenfield Prize Weekend, a three-day celebration of the arts that will include lectures, performances and a gala dinner. (See story here.)

But until last week, the centerpiece of Hancock's exhibition, a seven-minute video, was still being shot in Tampa.

"What the Bringback Brought" includes character figures, masks, sketches and storyboards that went into the making of the video, which eventually, Hancock hopes, will be a film about 20 minutes long. The film's narrative is inspired by Hancock's lifelong love of science fiction and horror movies, especially those of the pre-CGI era, when monsters were created by building a bizarre mask or suit and putting a person inside it.

"Cabbage," from "What the Bringback Brought" by Trenton Doyle Hancock, on display at the Ringling Museum of Art.

"Cabbage," from "What the Bringback Brought" by Trenton Doyle Hancock, on display at the Ringling Museum of Art.

The video, which Hancock variously describes as a trailer, an infomercial and a commercial for a possible future line of toys, tells the story of the Bringback, a character from Hancock's past mythologies that centered around characters called Mounds and Vegans.

The video, directed by Desiree Moore, was shot at Graphicstudio at the University of South Florida in Tampa, a longtime collaborator with Hancock, and was in the finishing stages late last week.

Moore said she wasn't sure at the beginning of their collaboration that "we would be on the same page. Our work is very different."

But at her first meeting with Hancock, she spotted a small figurine that was the same as one her father had given her mother when they were dating.

"The Toymaker" from "What the Bringback Brought" by Trenton Doyle Hancock, on display at Ringling Museum of Art.

"The Toymaker" from "What the Bringback Brought" by Trenton Doyle Hancock, on display at Ringling Museum of Art.

"It was so strange that that was the first thing I saw," she said.

Moore's past directorial efforts have been with her own films; "What the Bringback Brought" was her first time to translate someone else's vision.

"The challenging part for me was that I wasn't making it into my own aesthetic and that it was true to his project, to the Mound philosophy, the Bringbacks," she said.

Graphicstudio worked with Hancock to create the toys or dolls that populate the film. But the bigger project was to create the Bringback itself, a black-and-white striped humanoid character.

As Hancock explains in the catalog for the exhibition, "Bringback is the name given to a humanoid creature covered in oscillating black and white fur bands. They generally have no mouths, and their eyes are abnormally large. Like fish, Bringbacks have no eyelids and never blink, making staring contests 'no fun.' Bringbacks are the minions of a Mound named Junior. Bringbacks apprehend and abduct 'usually' unwilling people, bringing them to the Junior Mound for his consumption."

In the film, Hancock himself is one of the victims.

"They drag me towards the Junior Mound and he eats me. While inside his body (which is somehow cavernous), I go through several psychological trials and rituals."

The transformation draws from Hancock's own background growing up in Paris, Texas, in a religiously conservative home; his fascination with comic books, action figures and especially, horror and science fiction movies.

The realized project is "very different" from what Hancock had initially envisioned in his proposal to the Greenfield Prize committee.

"I had narrowed that proposal into 'I would like to transform into one of my characters, something from a horror film from the '70s and '80s,'," said Hancock. "On another level, I just thought it would be cool; I just wanted to see what it would look like."

He let the idea percolate for a year while he worked on two other projects, one a retrospective of drawings, "Skin and Bones: Twenty Years of Drawing," and a a project inside a train tunnel in Hermann Park in Houston, "Destination Mound Town," what he describes as a Willy Wonka land for a train tunnel."

Both those projects came to fruition last spring, freeing him to turn his attention to the Greenfield commission.

"In my mind I hadn't made headway for the Greenfield Prize, but I had actually made some animations; I had worked on this drawing show which allowed me to travel back in time to what I thought was important," he said. "It loosened my brain up to realize I wanted this Greenfield Prize thing to be much bigger than I had said I wanted it to be."

The mission of the Greenfield Prize is to take established artists to the next phase of their career. For Hancock, it's not been about shifting directions artistically, but in setting new goals for himself as an artists.

"I was just talking to someone last night or today about being at this almost new, clean slate in my practice where I have to set new goals, what's the next five or 10 years going to be," he said. "I wasn't being stagnant, but I felt I had accomplished a lot of the goals I had set 10, 15 years prior. Now I'm back at that place where film is a frontier that is so exciting, toy design and production and distribution is really exciting. And that's doubled back and made my painting that much stronger. I feel that reinvigoration."

Hancock's collaboration with Margaret Miller at Graphicstudio is part of an ongoing effort to engage other artists and artisans in his work. Miller became acquainted with Hancock's work through David Norr, a former curator at the studio.

"I have a whole respect for what he's doing, and a passion for it," she said.

The studio is "an atelier, a workshop where we invite artists to come and make new work. He's certainly done that every time he's been in residence. It's been an opportunity for him to explore ideas or create projects that he couldn't do in other circumstances."

Miller said she'd seen the unfinished video last week' "it's quite professional and just the beginning of what he hopes to develop into a longer version. It begins to point to where he's going from here."

EXHIBIT PREVIEW
EMIT: WHAT THE BRINGBACK BROUGHT. By Trenton Doyle Hancock. April 17-Sept. 13 at the Ringling Museum of Art, 5401 Bay Shore Road, Sarasota. Museum admission is $25 with discounts for seniors, students and children. 358-3180; www.ringling.org.

EXHIBIT PREVIEW
EMIT: WHAT THE BRINGBACK BROUGHT.
By Trenton Doyle Hancock. April 17-Sept. 13 at the Ringling Museum of Art, 5401 Bay Shore Road, Sarasota. Museum admission is $25 with discounts for seniors, students and children. 358-3180; www.ringling.org.
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Susan Rife

Susan Rife is the arts and books editor for the Herald-Tribune Media Group. She holds a bachelor of science degree in journalism from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. She can be reached by email or call (941) 361-4930. Make sure to "Like" Arts Sarasota on Facebook for news and reviews of the arts.
Last modified: April 10, 2015
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