Watch the hypnotic work of Hanna Hansdotter as she makes her famed glass sculptures

Hanna Hansdotter’s accent is thick and broad, and totally delectable. She is from Skåne, the most southern part of Sweden. More precisely, Lund, the beautiful university town known for its cobbled streets and quaint architecture. Full disclosure: I am a sucker for a round-barrelled southern Swedish accent; they’re warm, hearty, and endlessly inviting.

The Swedish language tends to roll off the tongue, but when it comes to those from the south, the syllables practically dance. Perhaps I am projecting far too much in trying to find a synergy between how Hansdotter speaks and her billowing glass sculptures, round and opulent. Well... it’s a disarming accent nonetheless.

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Hansdotter lives on a farm called Gåsamåla, in Småland. She bought it three years ago, leaving Stockholm and everything she knew. She loves living in the middle of the woods, she tell me, miles away from anyone. Still... “I miss Stockholm. I miss my friends, and I miss restaurants,” she says, with a chuckle. “Out here I have to cook everything. I mean the closest thing to a restaurant around here is a pizzeria. The luxury of going out to eat, seeing friends...” her voice trails off.

She just got back from a work trip to the city, memories still fresh. “I spent a lot of time in this really fancy hotel where I was staying, enjoying life, and breathing. I don’t get to do that very often – take time, I mean,” she says. I wonder why she left Stockholm if she misses it so much. She responds bluntly: “I was offered a job here at the glassworks; at Kosta Boda, The Glass Factory in Boda, along with a studio. I had recently become a single mother. I had just graduated from Konstfack, University of Arts, Crafts and Design, and I needed a plan. I needed to make rent.”

Speaking to Hansdotter, I get the impression that she has made several major life decisions in the past few years, completely upending her life in Stockholm to live more simply, more remotely. Now, she evenly calculates each step as she balances her work as an artist with her role as a single mother to an eight-year-old boy. Hansdotter is pragmatic. Paired with her brutal honesty, her demeanour is a departure from the more romantic idea of who or what a ‘typical artist’ is; someone who is mysterious. Someone who is shut off from reality. This precise manner cuts a stark contrast to her work, which is free-flowing and mystical. Emotional, even.

She fell into glassblowing as a happy accident. “I had moved to Norway after high school, working and partying – actually mostly partying," she tells me, laughing. She had spent her last year in Norway working at a gas station. When Hansdotter returned to Sweden, it was time to figure out what she was going to do with her life. “I was at home, sitting next to my mom watching TV and saw this programme on glass-blowing and I just decided, that’s what I’m going to do,” she tells me. She had never even attempted glassblowing before. “It could have been any thing – wood, metal – but the programme was about glass, so I went for it, and applied to school."

Each of Hansdotter’s weekdays begin by taking her son to school. Then, she’s often in the studio, which is part of a larger collective of artistic spaces at the Glass Factory in Boda. I wonder if she feels the weight of centuries of glasswork tradition on her shoulders. She laughs, “No, not at all.” This is evident in her work, which she describes as, “bulbous ornate glass bodies.” They are alluring and shiny, rendered in exuberant colours, teetering slightly towards too-muchness, like a cake or candy that is far too sweet.

Hanna wants her sculptures to be perceived that way. “It should almost be difficult to look at them at times,” she says. “They need to bother you, to interrupt you, to be interesting.” The sculptures are meant to entice and repulse, luring you in with their delectable sensuality, and then pushing you back with their sheer outrageousness.

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Since graduation, the artist’s show-stopping sculptures have been exhibited in galleries and institutions globally and included in several major collections. She describes her process as part of an exercise in “rhythmic repetition on my part,” adding that this repetition “creates very free, individualistic beings.” Hansdotter is poetic when talking about her work. “They are their own entities, small bodies,” she says.

Still, these infectious works were born of necessity, rather than simply some artistic urge. “I needed to create something in art school that I could bring with me, something that could take me somewhere,” Hansdotter explains. “I was a newly minted single mother. It’s my art, and my expression, but at one point I thought whatever I make must shine, it has to actually sell as well. My work was not only my escape, but also a means to stability.”

Hansdotter describes her final years at art school, after having her son, as very focused. “Although the school was open all hours, I knew I only had a certain amount of time to dedicate to my practice, the rest had to go to my child,” she says. I recognise this trait in female artists who have recently had children, or perhaps it is a universal trait among new mothers: this ability to compartmentalise one’s work into a limited timeframe. It’s about knowing you only have a certain number of hours to create, so you had better make them count.

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Though farming tends to be in one’s blood – the sort of lifestyle that’s passed down through generations – for Hansdotter, it’s far from her upbringing. “When we lived in Stockholm, it was in a tiny apartment. I was so tied to my home, I hardly had an opportunity to enjoy the city I lived in,” she says. “I came back to Småland for work, but also for a different kind of life. I wanted a house, I wanted land and animals. I have so much energy, I constantly need new projects.”

The animals were initially a source of companionship. “The first year was slightly lonely, just me and my son Valdemar, so we started buying animals, first cats, then chickens, rabbits and finally a horse; a small pony and a donkey,” Hansdotter says. She takes care of all of this on her own. It hasn’t been without mishap. “My son doesn’t help very much, so we had to slaughter the rabbits... I thought we had two rabbit sisters, but then they started having babies. I mean, so many babies, there were rabbits everywhere, I mean seriously, they were sprouting rabbit babies,” she says.

Hansdotter and her two sisters were raised by a single mother, a woman she describes as “an incredibly hardworking teacher.” Her upbringing, surrounded by sisters and a strong maternal figure, has shaped the way in which she views family and relationships. “I really question this concept of the nuclear traditional family, and especially how women adhere to this social construct,” Hansdotter explains. "After my son was born, I lived with two friends, and that really made me think about how we choose to live. So many people I know, women, have these aspirations to break the mould, but in the end wind up in very traditional constellations in their relationships.”

When I ask what she’s currently busy with, Hansdotter is coy. She’s working on commissions for Kosta Boda, as well as a massive public sculpture that will live at Hötorget, a large square in central Stockholm – an unusual project for a glass artist. She’s also planning an upcoming solo exhibition at her gallery, Steinsland Berliner, in Stockholm. “A lot of things stopped during the pandemic,” Hansdotter says, noting that she was slated for a residency in Australia that has been postponed.

“I’m excited for the next chapter in my practice,” she says. “I’m creating a lot of new sculptures, introducing new techniques and installations into my work.” Meanwhile, Hansdotter’s broader goal is characteristically straightforward: maintaining a pleasant life on the farm. “My aim is to be happy, of course,” she says. “I just wish we could live differently, more communally, and that it was more accepted.”