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Making Omelets, 2025
A solo exhbition at PSLA in Los Angeles, CA.  Click the grey button for the artist statement and exhbition details.
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01:53:24 Single channel video projection
10 6ft utility tables, 4 screws, 8 milk crates, plywood, laser projector, wooden church pew

Edited by: Hannah O’Brien
Cinematography by: Andy Chinn
Second Unit AD: Zengyi Zhao
Cast: Stars

Omelet Bar Locations:
Thai Town, Hollywood Blvd and N Wilton Pl: May 22, 2024
Hollywood, Sunset Blvd and Vine: May 24, 2024
Downtown, Orpheum Theater: May 26, 2024
Koreatown, Wilshire Blvd south side of the street btw S Serrano and Hobart: May 29, 2024
Downtown, S Broadway Wedding Chapel, notary public: May 30, 2024
Griffith Park, William Mulholland Memorial Fountain: June 16, 2024
Venice, Main St and Grand on Windward Circle: June 19, 2024
Kreatown, southwest corner Oakwood and Western Ave by Sue’s dry cleaner: June 21, 2024
Hollywood II, Sunset and Vine : June 26, 2024
Beverly Hills, Wilshire and N Beverly: June 28, 2024
Los Feliz, Hollywood Blvd and N Harvard: December 19, 2024
Echo Park, Sunset Blvd and Logan St by Lassons: Jan 7, 2025
Orpheum Theater II: Jan 25, 2025
West Hollywood, Southeast corner Santa Monica Blvd and Harper Ave: February 14, 2025
Venice, north side of Windward roundabout: Feb 16, 2025
Downtown, Grand Central Market: March 7, 2025
Painting Omelets canceled March 16, 2025
Highland Park, N. Fig and N. Ave 55 Grocery Outlet: March 22, 2025
Joshua Tree, 29 Palms Hwy in an empty lot on the corner of Hillview Rd: March 28, 2025
Venice Beach, by the Handball Courts: April 3, 2025
Ocean Park, on the sand: April 4, 2025

More images of the exhibition:


     
   

Shaped by Lemons, 2024
Graduate thesis show. Click the grey button for the artist statement and exhibition details.
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Lemon Labyrinth for Mental Mealth, 2024

Rocking Stairs at the Beach, 2023
The stairs in these still images have been used in a live performance, a video and exhibited as a sculpture.  Visually in theater the staircase can be used to give characters authority, power and dramatic mobility; by rounding the bottom of the steps the sculpture rocks. The rocking stairs are not clearly directional, stable or fixed. The sculpture gains agency, it tips over, maybe dangerous

Rocking Stairs, 2023                                                     

Lizard Keychain Problem Play, 2022-2023

Waiting Room, 2022

Waiting Room was an installation for waiting. By assigning the task to wait, you are responsible to wait, and productivity gets tangled up with inertia.

It can be hard to implement patience and rest without it being for someone or something outside oneself.

A waiting room is the closest to a break without taking a break, your availability is unavailable. It is disguised relaxation.

Personally, waiting is my preferred method of escape, because when I am entirely available to just be, I am not present, instead I see it as an opportunity to pile on another task. Similarly, adding lanes to a highway doesn’t reduce traffic, it accommodates a higher volume of traffic. Technology has given us more time to do more tasks, not more free time.

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PAST ARTWORK


Feet, 2016




Automatic Needlepoint Screen Door I, 2013




Automatic Needlepoint Screen Door II, 2013



 



                   






Mondrian Tennis Courts, 2011


 

Hannah O’Brien (b. 1988, Texas) is an artist living and working in Los Angeles, CA. She received her BFA from Loyola University in New Orleans and an MFA from ArtCenter College of Design in 2024. She moves between sculpture and performance, constructing environments that both support and unsettle our desire for purpose, routine, and order. Her practice illuminates the ways in which life, labor, and self-worth are entangled. By moving fluidly between various roles, O’Brien exposes the inherent flimsiness and mutability of identity.

Her work embraces the unpredictable. By engaging pedestrians, weather, and other uncontrollable conditions, O’Brien invites chance into the structure of the work. Improvisation is a central strategy across her practice—whether in live performance or sculptural installation. This responsiveness to her surroundings produces moments of unscripted dialogue and connection, anchoring both artist and viewer in the immediacy of the present.

Questions of value and visibility run through her projects. O’Brien’s blend of comedy and seriousness complicates distinctions between what is recognized as “art” and what is dismissed as the residue of everyday life. The videos produced from these performances become sites of further inquiry; shaped through editing, they function as mechanisms for examining the aesthetic, social, and material traces left behind by each encounter.

O’Brien did alternative stand-up comedy from 2017-2021 and has shown work at Diboll Gallery in New Orleans LA, A.I.R Gallery Brooklyn NY, Gatto Pardo, Los Angeles CA, Peter and Mere Mullen Gallery, Pasadena CA, and a solo exhbition at PSLA in Los Angeles CA.

maryhannahobrien@gmail.com

Hannah O’Brien
Dallas, Texas
She/They

EDUCATION
2025 Marina Abramovic Institute, Karyes, Greece, MAI Certificate of Completion
2024 ArtCenter College of Design, Los Angeles, CA, Master of Fine Arts
2016 Upright Citizens Brigade, New York, NY, Improvisation and Sketch Writing
2011 Loyola University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, Bachelor of Arts, Studio Art
2009 University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Bachelor of Arts, Semester Abroad

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025 Making Omelets, PSLA, Los Angeles, CA
2024 Shaped by Lemons, ArtCenter Main Gallery, Pasadena, CA
2023 Scairs, ArtCenter Cave Gallery, Pasadena, CA
2023 We Are the Products,  Mullen Gallery, Pasadena, CA

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025 Cup Show, Wolford House, Los Angeles, CA
2024 Mirror Mirror, Gattopardo, Los Angeles, CA
2023 Connections 1978-2023, a continuous installation by Rosemary Mayer’s Estate, Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Promenade Terrace Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Beverly Hills, CA
2023 Corner Piece, Book Launch: ArtCenter Artist’s Book Workshop, Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles, CA
2022 LALAWHON: Live Radio Show, Radio.MontezPress.com, Los Angeles, CA
2017 Threads - A Sampling of Fiber Art, Ann Marie Sculpture Garden. Solomons, MD                       
2015 Generation X: Razzle Dazzle, A.I.R Gallery. Brooklyn, NY
2014 Out of The Blue, Pop up show, Manhattan, NY
2011 Folgers In Your Cup Senior Show, Collins C. Diboll Gallery; New Orleans, LA

PERFORMANCES
2024 - 2025 Omelet Bar, a year long international outdoor cooking station, Los Angeles, CA
2025 Rim of the World Road Concert, outdoor public art festival, Rimforest, CA
2024 Contemporary Art Daily Izakaya Theater, New Theater Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA
2023 Scairs, ArtCenter: Cave Gallery, Padadena, CA
2023 Lizard Keychain Problem Play #8, ArtCenter: Main Gallery, Pasadena, CA
2023 Leave No Trace? ArtCenter: Cave Gallery, Pasadena, CA
2023 Deluge: Porous Chalice, Curated by Catherine Taft, The Box, Los Angeles, CA
2023 Corner Piece, ArtCenter Open Studios, Pasadena, CA
2023 Display Dance, ArtCenter: Mullin Gallery, Pasadena, CA
2021 Booth 1, Omaha Summer Arts Festival, Omaha, NE
2017-2020 Almost A Comic, hosted a weekly live comedy show, Armoury D.E., Dallas, TX

RESIDENCIES
2016 Wagon Station Encampment at A-Z West, Andrea Zittel, Joshua Tree, CA