Blanket of Branches resurrects the titular archival work that blurs the interior-exterior binary. Originally created in 1986 for the Contemporary Arts Forum in Santa Barbara, CA, the work introduces Nature into the traditional gallery setting by suspending a web of branches from the gallery ceiling, creating a tranquil woodland within the white box.

Blanket of Branches is a part of the long history of installation works created by Hassinger. The natural world's personal significance to the artist inevitably led her to construct environments that complicate the boundaries of interior and exterior spaces.  1992’s aptly titled Cloud Room, created for the Pittsburgh International Airport's Reflection Room, consisted of multiple projection channels that depicted cloud-filled skies, immersing the viewer within a manmade natural phenomena.  Similarly, The Dream and Place Of Bliss each pay homage to the natural world using materials taken from Nature. Both installations incorporate foliage, preserved leaves, suspended from above, creating canopies reminiscent of natural spaces.

"Conventional binaries and hierarchies that neatly separated industry from a thoroughly sanctified nature were challenged, suggesting that as nature is artificially reproduced—genetic engineering, theme parks, suburbia, etc. – and our infringement upon it intensifies, those changes bear examination…installations like Heaven (1985), a room of preserved and scented rose leaves covering the gallery walls or Blanket of Branches (1986) a ceiling mounted suspended web of bare intertwining branches, challenged traditional sculptural aesthetics as well as requirements for permanency in traditional art valuation with their ephemerality."

 - Constance Mallinson, Times Quotidian (2011)

Natural materials appear throughout Hassinger’s practice. Salvaged limbs have been employed as building material, as seen in Hassinger’s Monuments series, where geometric shapes and forms are constructed from branches woven or tethered to a framework, or in works like Delta, where branches are interlaced and juxtaposed with Hassinger’s wire rope. Hassinger also uses the branches in site-specific installations not unlike Blanket of Branches. In Perimeter, they delineate a portion of the site, creating a demarcation that alters the space and, in turn, the viewers' understanding and experience of the site.

Echoes of Hassinger’s seminal 1981 installation for LACMA, On Dangerous Ground, can be seen here, an installation that will find new life in the Gallery’s presentation at The ADAA Fair in November 2026. Hassinger’s use of wire rope to imitate Nature crowded the small gallery with over a dozen wire bushes and wall works, articulating her uncertain experience of the institutional setting as a woman of color. Whereas the emotional overtones of On Dangerous Ground are perilous or volatile, Blanket of Branches seeks to comfort and soothe, creating an environment primed for contemplation, reflection, and recentering. 

Hassinger’s engagement with natural spaces and the restorative quality associated with immersing oneself in the natural world are reflected in various cultures and practices.  Consider the Japanese shinrin-yoku, or “forest bathing," also referred to as sylvotherapy.  These practices demonstrate the connection between wellness and communion with the living world. They take on ever greater significance in the modern world, where industrialization and expansion increasingly encroach on organic spaces, and the demands of capitalism and labor diminish our contact with Nature. Hassinger brings a version of the outdoors in; the installation serves as an example of biophilic design, which integrates natural elements and forms in architecture and interiors for the betterment of its inhabitants. 

These works are a perfect example of Hassinger’s creative and personal philosophies: movement as the message and Nature as the North Star. The works feel suspended in time, the unseen wind sending ripples through the steel tendrils. A viewer is reminded of natural phenomena, while the unforgiving materiality suggests the industrial and loss of organic spaces to urban expansion.

A series of lyrical works on paper closes out the show.  Originally conceived at the Joan Mitchell Foundation in New Orleans, the artist selects a word that conjures the natural world, filling the page with carefully rendered lines of cursive script.  The natural drift of the written words causes the columns and rows to shift ever so slightly, creating vertical ripples amongst the continuous horizontal line of the script, mimicking natural topographies and movements. Hassinger's practice has long centered on Nature as a place where the artist finds peace and harmony. The repetition of her script forms a mantra channeling that peace.

"I think that in some way all my work expresses a nostalgia for a lost natural space, a perfection that is past."

– Maren Hassinger