Hannah Toussaint
she/they
Athens, GA, USA
Hannah Reynoso Toussaint is a metalsmith located in Athens, Georgia completing a Master of Fine Arts in Metalsmithing and Jewelry at the University of Georgia. Hannah earned their BA from the University of New Orleans, and completed a post-baccalaureate program at the University of North Texas in 2022 for Jewelry and Metalsmithing. Hannah identifies as a queer latinx maker with a special interest in the materiality of glass. Hannah's work has been exhibited nationally including the Metal Museum in Memphis, TN and at New York City Jewelry Week 2024, and 2025. They recently received Best in Show for the 2025 Society of North American Goldsmiths Student Juried Exhibition.
“My practice explores the tension and harmony between fragility and strength, visibility and concealment, interior and exterior. Working primarily in metal and blown glass, I create intimate, wearable objects that engage with the body as both a site of transformation and a vessel for care. Glass, with its fluidity and fragility, evokes queerness, vulnerability, and the mystical. Metal, by contrast, offers a sense of grounding and durability. Together, these materials mirror the dualities I navigate as a queer, invisibly disabled, Latinx artist grounded in nepantla- an indigenous Nahuatl word for spaces of in-between.”
How does your work relate to the theme of flourish(ing)?
“I think of care as a mode of survival and thriving that shows up as inspiration in my work.
Much of my work orients itself around care—for my ancestors, for nonhuman entities and spiritual practice, for fragile materials like blown glass. Care in itself is a flourishing practice: it resists extraction and violence by cultivating relational growth and continuity. Each piece I create becomes a site where fragility is not a weakness but a condition for connection. It is connection which brings us together and I really believe in a flourishing collective."
"Fragile Bodies Necklace II", Borosilicate glass, reclaimed pearls, sterling silver, silk thread, 10" x 7" x 1.5", 2025
How does your creative practice allow you to flourish (grow, thrive, blossom)?
“My practice allows me to flourish by grounding me in ritual processes of metalsmithing and glassblowing, where transformation emerges through breath, heat, and touch. In working with fragile materials, I learn to embrace vulnerability as a source of resilience, letting fragility and strength coexist. By creating objects that give form to the unseen—ancestral memory, shadow selves, and nonhuman relations—I find a space of nepantla, an in-between where contradictions can live and generate new meaning. These practices nourish me not only as an individual but also as part of a wider network of care, allowing my creativity to expand outward and root me in cycles of connection and becoming with my community.”
Photographs Courtesy of the Artist
As a queer+ artist, what would you like to see and/or what do you need in order to flourish during this time?
“I need connection to my queer arts community most during this time. Building a relational system of trust and a network of care is the ultimate goal for times like these, and I find joy and contentment in being able to fall back on this net for support as well as being able to offer my own to my community; Creatively, emotionally, and sometimes even physically- offering a hand in a friends' studio before a big deadline can be an ultimate act of care allowing us all to flourish collectively.”