As friends and fellow artists, photographer Jason Hanasik and crochet artist Nathan Vincent, were well aware of each other’s artistic engagement in an exploration of the normative ideal of American masculinity and how it influences gender permissions and expectations. Though working independently and with different media, each was posing similar questions and challenging society’s conception about what it means to be a man. As a result of this common interest and a similar artistic motivation, conversation began to ensue as to what it would be like to “commingle” their work and their ideas about the way in which we as a society “build boys and men.” Out of these discussions was born the exhibition, WAIT ‘TIL YOUR FATHER COMES HOME.

It is the aim of both Hanasik and Vincent that this exhibition spark a dialogue about the notion that masculinity as we know it is a social and cultural construct, and that these behaviors are not to be chalked up to “human nature”. The artists are hopeful that additional conversations will ensue about the power we have as a society to reconstruct the masculine ideal to include alternative masculinities from which, notes Hanasik, “to build a new man, a more compassionate, available, emotional man.” Vincent adds, “While I feel our collective consciousness is expanding around the issues of gender and patriarchy, there is still much progress to be made.”

A Hampton Roads native, Jason Hanasik lives and works in San Francisco, CA. Originally from the Midwest, Nathan Vincent currently resides in New York City. Both artists have extensive exhibition records and have shown their work in numerous galleries and institutions across the country, including venues in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Chicago.