Artist of the Week: Milla Hanova

Photos by Lucy Morantz and Luke Hoffman

Junior Milla Hanova is in IB Art Portfolio and uses world topics as a source of inspiration for her artwork.

Q: Tell me about your art and style.

A: I try to do whatever I feel like doing. I don’t usually do 3D art but when it comes to 2D art, I don’t know if I have a style, because I like trying different things out. I’ve done abstract expressionism, painting and I’ve also done watercolor. But lately, it’s actually been political.

Q: Would you say politics inspires your art?

A: I think recently it definitely has, because I think, especially international politics, are really interesting. It’s sad that some of the things that are happening in the world that aren’t so great are happening but I wanted to share my opinion on that.  

Q: Do you prefer drawing or painting?

A: I’ve been watercoloring since I was four and then drawing since I was two, so I love both of them. Recently though I’ve been trying to do more with acrylics and oils and colored pencils because I’m not as good at colored pencil as I’d like to be, but I feel like I’ve been getting better with that.

Q: What’s another aspect of art that you’d like to try out?

A: I’ve done a little bit with 2D animation a couple years ago at Kansas City Art Institute and that was a really fun class, and I’d like to do more of that. I just am not really a great digital artist. I’m more of a traditional artist because I feel like it’s hard to make things look clean when they’re on a computer.

Q: What’s your thought process when you’re deciding what you want to create?

A: Usually, if it’s based on a prompt, then how I can make it my own. Last year, this goes back into politics, we had a prompt in Drawing 2 that was: make a weird creature out of different studies we had done over body parts and tape them all together and for the background make it something weird. They’re called grotesques. I drew a picture of Putin and defaced it and wrote grotesque in Cyrillic and English and ended up needing to make a new background… I don’t want to say I just think about politics, but I kind of do think about what’s going on because my mom was a political science major in college and is still very active with that stuff and my dad is on the complete other side of the spectrum. He’s conservative and from Kazakhstan, so it’s kind of weird how often politics comes up between family members so it is something on my mind a lot. I’m just kind of disappointed with how things are right now and I want to say something about that, but I’m also afraid to speak up with my words, so I try to do everything I can to make my art mean something to me when it comes to what’s going on right now.

Q: What’s your favorite piece of artwork you’ve created so far?

A: I think probably the drawing of Putin that I did. I’ve done a lot of things in the past that I liked, but because I was so happy that it turned out OK because I’m not used to colored pencils that that’s probably my favorite right now.

Q: Could you describe the Putin artwork to me?

A: “It’s a two-piece so it goes with the drawing of Donald Trump that I did. I was bothered by the Helsinki Summit a couple months ago, so that was on my mind recently again, so that’s why I did both of them and the whole thing with Russia and meddling in everything, so that’s the point of the piece.  I picked red dahlias for the flowers in the piece because I think they represented, if I remember correctly, betrayal or dishonesty or something along those lines. I thought that was an interesting thing to put in my drawing of Putin. The whole point of the two drawings were [that] I kind of wanted to speak up about Trump and Putin, but I wanted the pieces to still look pretty so that’s why I went with flowers.

Milla’s drawings of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump

Q: Are there any websites or apps you use to gain inspiration?

A: I think Instagram is really great, because there are a lot of artists that I follow who do really cool stuff. They’re from all over the world too so you get to see what so many different types of people are doing or thinking about. I do think that affects what you’re making, obviously because it’s from your brain. Also, for artists who aren’t living anymore, I like looking at art books. I don’t own any but I like going to libraries and checking those out.

Q: Who’s your favorite artist, living or dead?

A: This is tough. I think Christoph Niemann. He’s living. He’s really cool. He was in a Netflix documentary about different creative fields and he was an Illustrator. Carson Ellis is also a good illustrator. She’s still living. I think for dead, there’s a painter named Maria Prymachenko. She did a lot of cool stuff. She was a Ukrainian artist who lived during Stalin’s forced famine and she’s a folk artist so a lot of her stuff has a lot of bright colors and it has all sorts of animals, but there’s also a lot of good versus evil that’s prevalent in her work which makes sense considering the circumstances she lived under.

Q: How do you share your art?

A: I do my best to share on Instagram. I used to have two seperate accounts, one for art and one for my main account, but I got tired of that because I felt like with two seperate accounts, I wasn’t as likely to post on my art account so I just started posting on my regular account (@dande.leo) which I think was good. I’m still working on some stuff so there will be more stuff up soon.

Q: What kind of role do you see art playing in your future?

A: Recently, I’ve been really torn up about it because I’ve thought about pursuing the fine arts or maybe pursuing something in the liberal arts field. But art has been something that I’ve wanted to do since I knew that you could have a job, so I think that’s probably something I should look into. I think [there’s] the fear of not making money or fear of finding a job because, even though artists are somewhat appreciated, not all of them are. You have to be really big today and historically you had to be a really big artist to make money from it. I think when I’m applying to colleges, I’ll probably apply to a couple of both types of schools. I’m hoping that I can do something with art in my future even if that’s not my career.

Q: How do you incorporate art into your daily life here at East? What at East helps you pursue art?

A: Definitely art classes with Mr. Finkelston. I’m in IB Art right now so that’s really great to have, just time at school to do art. Also whenever we have a school project and there’s art involved, I try to be the one, if we’re doing a group project, to do that. I don’t usually do art at home because I have so much homework and there’s other things on my mind, so unless I’m taking a class or it’s for a different class, I won’t do it. So when there are projects that are specifically geared towards art I try to do my best to be involved with that so I can at least get better or practice.

Q: Do you work on your art a lot in the summer?

A: I do tend to do more art in the summer. I also like taking a lot of classes at KCAI because I think it’s fun to have instruction or a certain goal that someone gives you rather than being left to your own devices. Whenever I’m left to my own devices, I’m kind of caught up by a lot of different ideas and intimidated by it because I’m not sure it’s going to be as good as I want it to be, so I don’t do it. I think it’s good to have a prompt or an instructor or something, so that’s why I like to take classes.

More art pieces by Milla Hanova