Class: 2014
College: Davenport
Major: Art and Humanities
Hometown: San Antonio, TX
This week’s Her Campus celebrity, Hannah Flato, is a current senior in Davenport, double majoring in Art and Humanities. This southern, art-enthusiast is known around Yale for her bright smile and position last year as the YCBA’s Head Guide. HerCampus sat down with Hannah to see what’s been going on recently in her life, so read below to hear all about Hannah’s adventures in Mexico this past summer, her passion for art, and also her random, yet fascinating, obsession with fake grass.
HC: You were Head Guide last year of the YCBA? What was that like?
HF: “The YCBA (Yale Center for British Art) was the first group that I got involved with at Yale. I became a tour guide at the YCBA within my first weeks at Yale, so it really was the first thing I did. I immediately fell in love with the building, especially its architecture, since my dad is an architect.”
For Hannah, “the gallery itself became kind of a sanctuary” that she could return to weekly for their group meetings and training sessions. As head guide, Hannah was given the responsibility of actively helping choose the next group of guides, and said, “it [was] really fun for me, in the future, to craft that same kind of group of gallery guides together. I have been there for a long time and it has been a really great, constant program. We meet every Friday; we talk about art, go on cool field trips, and get to know one another. It has also been nice this year to kind of enjoy it more like I did during freshman year, as just one of the tour guides, not the head guide. During my sophomore year, I coordinated the YCBA Art Club, so I would organize different activities at the center where both students and adults could come and do all sorts of crafts.”
HC: What drew you to choose the YCBA guide programs on campus?
HF: I chose the YCBA program because I fell in love with the center itself and the space itself when I was a freshman. I have lots of friends in the YUAG Gallery Guide program, and I think it’s a wonderful program. In the end, though, the YCBA was a wonderful community for me; that’s what I was looking for as a freshman and that is what I found there. The program is basically this long seminar that lasts throughout your entire time at Yale. We are trained as a community trained to view art. The program made me feel like I was part of a fun cross-section of the Yale community that I could also consider good friends.
HC: What do you do on campus outside of YCBA?
HF: During my sophomore year, I spent a little bit of time with Yale Herald when they redesigned their magazine. I was their design, graphic and image editor. That was a big part of my life for about a year and I loved it because it was another chance for me to connect with a new group of people at Yale. I also was the CAO (Chief Administration Officer) for Theta during part of my sophomore and junior years. Right now, I am spending lots of my time in the art studio, doing independent projects with art as well. Basically, I was always trained in drawing and painting and I have been drawing since I was very tiny. Actually, the reason I’m a double major is because I use humanities as a chance to explore topics of cultural character and the sense and character of a place. Having left Texas at fourteen to go to boarding school, I was interested in trying to figure out what it meant to be from a certain place and landscape. I use my art to explore those ideas. At some point, I actually fell in love with astro-turf (fake grass) and I make paintings out of it now. Some of those paintings are more conceptual, while others are more figurative. Essentially, I like its plasticity, what that plasticity represents to me, and how AstroTurf can just mimic something real; it’s bizarre. It’s actually something I will probably write my senior thesis on.
HC: What did you do this past summer?
HF: I was in Mexico City this past summer, working for a think tank for the Mexican City government. A female Yale World fellow, who is from Mexico herself, started the think-tank. She is now my inspiration. She has an artistic, entrepreneurial, curatorial view on the world – she brings those views to bear on her interpretation of how the Mexican government could innovate and improve the city. I would love to go back there [Mexico City] in some capacity, so I am looking into jobs there. It’s just a really inspirational city in general. The experience gave me an idea of how important it is to be in a place that is important to you, and in a city that you can see coming together around you.
HC: What will you miss most about Yale?
HF: Oh gosh, the people, for sure. The professors and my peers.
HC: What is your favorite place in New Haven?
HF: The Yale Center for British Art or the Sculpture Garden at the Yale University Art Gallery.
HC: What is something people probably don’t know about you?
HF: I went through a major Sudoku phase, for a few solid years. And I wrote about my obsession with Sudoku for a college essay.
HC: If you could give one piece of advice to younger undergraduates at Yale, what would it be?
HF: Hmm. The things that I’ve done at Yale that made me happiest started by saying yes to the more random things that I found, or that found me. I was essentially happiest when I branched out and joined a group or activity that introduced me to new people that I was absolutely inspired by. I could’ve done that so much more than I did, because there are just some really incredible opportunities here. As soon as you have an idea, there are people at Yale to support you and make sure it happens. Branch out.