Echo

For this artist's book project, Hagstrom collaborated with fellow Carleton College professor Gregory Hewett to produce an evocative integration of image and word. Hagstrom creates studies of nature as a starting point for his abstract imagery, an approach which developed from his longstanding interest in the art and culture of the indigenous Maori people of New Zealand, who closely identify with the natural world. Hagstrom's series of abstract earth-toned compositions feature organic black forms that seem to hover over the pictorial space, much like clouds hovering over the surface of the earth when viewed from high above. They are at once mysterious and familiar.