Alumni in the News: Lisa Hanawalt '06 (Art, B.A.)

The artist, illustrator, designer, writer, podcast host, and James Beard Award winner is on fire.

October 12, 2016

Alumni in the News: Lisa Hanawalt '06 (Art, B.A.)

Lisa Hanawalt ’06 (B.A., Art), artist, illustrator, designer, writer, podcast host, and James Beard Award winner is on fire. This summer marked the publication of her second book, Hot Dog Taste Test; the debut of the Hanawalt-directed and designed music video for Tegan and Sara’s latest single, Hang on to the Night; and release of the third season of Netflix’s acclaimed animated series BoJack Horseman for which Hanawalt is production designer and producer. Not surprisingly, the press took note. Read on for the best excerpts from Hanawalt’s impressive media coverage over the past few months, and some additional nuggets of wisdom straight from the horse’s mouth. (Get it?)

On being unique:

“Emerging from the world of alternative comics, where she’d hand-sell her self-published comics at small-press conventions around the country, Hanawalt soon developed a massive following the old-fashioned way: by looking and reading like nothing else out there.” (Observer)

“She embodies two anti-elitist tendencies that are normally at odds: wackiness and down-to-earthism.” (NPR)

^{Early sketches of BoJack Horseman}

On consistency:

“When I look at my childhood art, it’s the same. It’s animals dressed up as people in patterned clothing. It basically looked like concept art for BoJack. It’s kind of uncanny.” (New York Magazine)

On authenticity:

“It bugged me to watch shows and everything is so neat and tidy, because my life is never neat and tidy. If I leave a pile of mail on the kitchen table, it’s still going to be there the next day. And so I would watch shows in amazement: Who is cleaning these houses? How does everything always end up back where it should be?...If someone burns an ottoman, that ottoman is burned. It’s interesting and really difficult, from an animation standpoint, technically. You have to track everything. We have to track where Todd’s garbage goes. It represents that—in this universe—there are consequences to the actions for the characters.” (GQ)

^{_{Herb Kazzaz’s office in Season 2 Episode 1 of BoJack Horseman}}

On creative influences:

“Sometimes when I’m filling in the background, I go back and look at painters that I love and try to capture their style…We joke that every character on [BoJack Horseman] is an art expert, but really it’s just me nerding out, and the whole crew has gotten into that.” (Slate)

“Hanawalt manages to place puns, references and sight gags in nearly every shot, giving this abrasive ecosystem some internal logic – I’m fond of the jukebox listing Macaque the Knife, or the equine Basquiat paintings foreshadowing BoJack’s alienation from his old mentor/showrunner Herb.” (The Guardian)

^{Planting excerpt from Hot Dog Taste Test, originally published in the Plant Kingdom issue of Lucky Peach magazine, Spring 2015.}

On the power of humor:

“I think humour is a way of dealing with pain and anxiety, and life can be kind of awful sometimes and bad things happen for no reason…I don’t want my work to be all fluff…You have to take the silly with the dark.” (National Post)

On being an artist while female:

“People still come up to me and say, ‘Wow, it’s so crazy that you show women’s bodies in a gross way [in your book]’ and I’m like, It’s 2016! It’s important to me. I don’t consider myself a political artist but I am political just by nature of being a woman.” (New York Magazine)

On planning ahead (or not):

“I’d tell my younger self that it’s hard to plan ahead for a career in the arts—you follow whatever opportunities come up and you have to trust your gut on what kind of art to make. I never intended to do illustration or work in animation, but I got into those fields when I realized I couldn’t get by doing fine art and comics alone. You also can’t rush into creating a distinctive style; that’s something that develops as you continue to make work. It all takes longer than you’d expect.” (As told to UCLA Arts)

^{Rough animatic for Tegan and Sara’s}^{Hang on to the Night music video, directed and designed by Lisa Hanawalt}

On why arts education matters:

“Arts education teaches us empathy, and allows us to see things from different perspectives. Art is an integral part of human culture. We study art for the same reason we study anything: to better ourselves and each other, to see more, and to satisfy primal, creative drives. At UCLA I learned to think more critically about my practice. I’d make art whether or not I had an art degree, but I'm constantly seeing ways in which my education influences and improves my work.” (As told to UCLA Arts)

On working across disciplines:

“At UCLA, I was able to fool around in different media and follow my interests, which is a huge part of my work still today. I love jumping around between media, it keeps me from getting bored and keeps my work from getting stale. Learning new skills can be super frustrating—I hate making mistakes and feeling like a beginner! But it’s great for creativity.” (As told to UCLA Arts)

^{Detail of Tegan and Sara’s Hang on to the Night music video, directed and designed by Lisa Hanawalt}

Lisa Hanawalt on her aesthetic:

“buttocks-based” (Los Angeles Magazine)

The New Yorker on Lisa Hanawalt:
“Brilliant”

Find out more about Lisa Hanawalt: www.lisahanawalt.com

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^{Header image credit: Jean Ho}