5 Questions With… Pamela Hovland: From Hay Bales to Helvetica

Pamela Hovland is a designer, educator, writer, curator and visual activist who has worked predominantly in identity, print communications, signage and screen-based design for corporations, nonprofit organizations, cultural institutions and individuals. Her art has been recognized by numerous organizations and publications and has been included in regional, national and international exhibitions. 

Born on a dairy farm in northern Minnesota and raised by her Norwegian father (a farmer, small business owner and elected politician) and her Swedish mother (a home-maker, piano teacher and interior decorator), her parents instilled in both Pamela and her sisters the midwestern values of hard work, family loyalty and community engagement. 

From an early age she knew she wanted to have a career in the visual arts; after college in Minnesota and a design internship in Minneapolis, Hovland packed up her rental car and headed for the Big Apple. 

There, her design training at two global corporate identity consultancies exposed her to many things including travel, as well as the realization that she needed more education. She soon left the corporate world for graduate school at Yale. There she received her MFA, met her husband and joined the faculty. She’s taught there for over three decades and is currently a Senior Critic in Graphic Design as well as Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and a founding member of Class Action Collective, the art collective that uses design to effect social change. 

Hovland works with and mentors undergraduate and graduate students from all over the world, curates, researches and writes — all while running her own design practice and collaborating with her design collective on activist work, a central focus for her. Recently she’s stepped into the role of Acting Executive Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art / Connecticut in Westport. 

Having moved to Wilton ‘temporarily’ many moons ago, she feels lucky to have developed life-long friendships, sent their son Henry to excellent public schools and participated in the civic life the town of Wilton has to offer. Over the past few decades she has been involved with the Wilton Library, Ambler Farm, Wilton Historical Society, League of Women Voters, and Democratic Town Committee, to name a few. 

Lesley Kirschner caught up with this fellow rural transplant and juxtaposition-lover on what it means to fear snakes, make moves as they present themselves and (maybe) sleep with your mouth closed. 

1. Is there someone who’s been an artistic inspiration in your life or mentor? And conversely, how do you feel you’ve been able to inspire aspiring artists or young people as an educator? 

Pamela Hovland: I was definitely influenced heavily by the women in my family during my childhood. They made everything imaginable with their hands — they sewed their clothing, upholstered furniture, crafted gifts, canned fruits and vegetables from our garden, knitted/crocheted/quilted. Another undeniable influence for me was my mentor Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, a celebrated designer, public artist, feminist and educator. She has informed my work in a number of meaningful ways and continues to do so. It has been Sheila’s model that I have adapted for my own pedagogical philosophy. My courses are often built around the goal of helping students become more aware of their own, very personal, ways of working and to introduce them to other strategies and methodologies that might prove useful as they mature in their practice. 

2. Sometimes I think necessity is more the mother of REinvention rather than invention in my life. Have you ever had to start over where you are or change courses in ways you didn’t expect? 

Hovland: I’ve never been someone who made a master plan, in any aspect of my life — personal or professional. Perhaps I have an attention deficit disorder (as many visual artists do) but there is something to be said about making moves as they present themselves. I’ve trusted my instincts and sometimes those decisions had to be made because of necessity, but mostly they were made because I embraced a new challenge. I wanted to see if I could actually do the work that was in front of me. 

3. What would you say to all the starving artists out there? Was there ever a time you had to paint for your pay or sing for your supper, so to speak? 

Hovland: Yes. For sure. In fact I still feel guilty that I didn’t pay my rent consistently to my first landlord in New York City. Luckily for me, he was sympathetic to young creatives as he had been one himself decades earlier. I had to work my 9-to-5 job and then work until the late hours on freelance projects. I was too proud to call home for any financial help so my lenient (or maybe absent-minded) landlord provided some extra help during those first years. So my advice to young creative souls is to surround yourself with people who support your work in multiple ways — as like minded collaborators, as mentors, as resources even as competitors. Most of us need ‘a village’ in which to thrive. 

4. I know ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusivity’ are pretty synonymous with ‘community’ for you. Was there a particular experience in your life that shaped or solidified those ideals for you? 

Hovland: My father was an elected official in our rural community in northern Minnesota. That remote place was just starting to become more diverse and I remember that he was committed to talking to everyone about their varied concerns and challenges, even if he hadn’t experienced them himself. Also, I have often credited my father as being the first feminist in my life. He had three daughters and believed to his core that we were equal in all ways to the boys down the road. As a result, we were driving tractors, baling hay, taking gun training, playing every sport, etc. 

Kirschner: How do you think growing up rural shaped your identity as an artist in terms of your perception and perspective on the human experience? 

Hovland: I’m still learning about the effects of my environment, even as I’m now in my 60s, but space and simplicity are obvious lasting forces. I loved growing up on hundreds of acres with 360 degree views of the sky with dairy cows, dogs and a horse as my first friends (alongside my two sisters and my neighbor Fae, a few miles away via bike ride).

Our life there was simple and honest in many ways but from a very early age I was scouring magazines, books and the Encyclopedia for information about New York City. These two places couldn’t be more different from each other but I was equally entranced by both of them.

The ideas of contrast and juxtaposition are often embedded in my work. For example, much of my design output considers the combination of the hand-made and the digital, or the big and the small, or the static and the playful. My activist work also tries to include two seemingly opposed ideas that have more in common than what is on the surface. And finally, my approach to teaching is to allow space for all points of view — conceptual and aesthetic. In my own work I gravitate towards visual simplicity but I want my students to find their own authentic voice. 

5. Here’s the ‘Who are you?”-speed round.

Kirschner: If you had a spirit animal, what would it be? 

Hovland: I’ve always had a fascination with polar bears (but have only ever seen them in captivity). Maybe it is my Nordic heritage. Polar bears are playful and graceful but also strong, resilient and adaptable, traits that I find admirable. I hope someday to travel to Svalbard in Norway to see one in the wild. 

Kirschner: How do you take your coffee? 

Hovland: Right now, in the summer months, I’m drinking my morning coffee over ice with oat milk. I’ve only recently begun drinking coffee but it didn’t take long to develop a morning addiction to it. And my husband Steve makes it quite strong. 

Kirschner: If you could choose any super power, which one would you choose? 

Hovland: I feel like I would benefit most from eidetic memory — the ability to remember everything I see with perfect clarity and detail. I often wake up in the middle of the night with the visual answer to a problem I’m trying to solve and then cannot recall it in the morning. But another super power, time manipulation, would also be helpful. I would occasionally slow down time in order to get to more of the work I want to do. 

Kirschner: What was the last book you read? 

Hovland: I recently finished two books that I loved for very different reasons. My whole family read James by the prolific (and Pulitzer Prize-winning) Percival Everett and there were so many facets to discuss from his imaginative retelling of the classic Huckleberry Finn.

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams was a beautifully crafted and visually evocative story that I’ve recommended to many friends. I’m about to re-read The Bill of Obligations by Richard Haass, as we all need to be reminded of our role in American democracy. 

Kirschner: I used to babysit for a little girl who firmly believed if she slept with her mouth open, iguanas would crawl down her throat and take up residence in her stomach. Do you have any irrational fears? 

Hovland: Having been chased by a few sizable iguanas in Honduras, I can understand that young girl’s fear. My irrational concern is ophidiophobia, the fear of snakes. My fear started on the farm when I encountered snakes caught in the baling machine. My job was to move the hay bales to the back of the wagon for others to stack high; often a snake (or half a snake), desperate to find its way back to the field, would surface just as I was about to handle the bale. I can’t imagine anything worse than a slithering snake crawling up my arm.