Today we’d like to introduce you to Hannah Jaeger.
Hi Hannah, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I’m Hannah, but my friends call me Honey. I was born in 1993 in Northern California and raised in Hollister CA. and For as long as I can remember, art has been my language. Creating is how I process the world around, the creative process is where I explore my thoughts, emotions, and my environment. I’m a deeply tactile person, and making art gives form to feelings I’ve never been able to put into words. I have always known I was created to create, and have dreamed of being an artist, having the freedom to create on a daily basis, and to show my work in galleries around the world.
I was raised in a conservative, fundamental Christian household built on traditional nuclear family ideals. As I grew, I witnessed and experienced the meltdown of that ideal firsthand and how that structure failed me. I’m the middle child and eldest daughter of seven. My early childhood was happy and carefree, my parents instilled that connection to nature early on, many Yosemite trips backpacking, camping, climbing Half Dome. My siblings and I spent summers in Santa Cruz, swimming in the ocean, sailing, fishing and training with Junior Guards. The connection of earth and body is present in my work current day.
When my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, everything changed. I was eleven when she passed away, and it felt like my guiding light had gone out. My father never recovered from her death; his grief and withdrawal left my siblings and me without direction, processing loss with no therapy, no counseling, and no real guidance. Outside of church, he was a very angry difficult man to connect with, he burned the bridges of anyone who tried to help us. I spent my adolescence under a heavy cloud of grief, anxiety, and uncertainty.
By the time I graduated high school, I had no idea how to get into art school or how to pay for it. My fathers told me to attend community college and take business classes. Instead, I spent the next six years running from grief and trauma, learning hard lessons on what I didn’t want in life. I had no confidence, no real sense of self-worth, and I made decisions from that place of fear. I was too scared to pursue my dreams, too scared to do the hard work of becoming the artist I already knew I was meant to be.
I was working as a professional real estate photographer when my wake-up call came in the form of a freak accident, a piece of glass lacerated half of my lower left leg, missing my anterior artery by a millimeter and leaving me unable to feel or move my foot. Doctors warned I might never walk unassisted again, run or CrossFit. I had never realized how deeply my physical movement was tied to both my mental health and my creative practice. When I was told I might lose my mobility, I decided I would get it back. That recovery taught me one of the most profound lessons of my life, I am the only one in my way, life is too fragile and short to not pursue my dreams. During my recovery process I worked on my portfolio and applied to art schools.
When I got my acceptance letter to ArtCenter in Pasadena I felt a hope for my future unlike anything I had felt before. In 2018, I moved to Pasadena to attend ArtCenter College of Design, and my world truly opened up. I fell in love with Los Angeles its chaos and vibrancy, I found inspiration in underground clubs and techno warehouses. During my time at ArtCenter, I took neuroscience courses that forever changed how I understood perception and reality itself. It deepened my understanding of what art can do, how it shapes and reshapes the way we see and how we connect. The formation of my brand “my strange honey” began here, as I began to question and pick apart and question what we know culture to be. I questioned the impact of social norms, beauty standards, and the role media plays in informing our daily lives. How visual imagery and pictures found in vintage Playboy, National Geographic and Life Magazines instructed the American people to consume to consume products, lifestyle and consume the female body. Visual imagery informed the masses and created social commodification value. I graduated ArtCenter in 2020 during the pandemic with a BFA.
While I at ArtCenter I met my now husband Russell. He is a production designer for film and television, and a creative genius. I have blossomed and grown so much in our relationship. Over the course of the past 3 years, I found a therapist I really love, I am deeply committed to doing the hard psychological work to continue to grow and heal. In January of 2024 I told Russell it was my goal to show in 2 galleries. With his support “my strange honey” ha/ shown in at least 1 gallery every month since then, often times 2 or more in Los Angeles and a few on the east coast. This past October, I had a booth at The Other Art Fair Los Angeles. I connected with so many amazing humans. Today I found out I was accepted again “The Other Art Fair” Feb 26- Mar 1 2026 during LA Art Week. My mind is blown, I am actively watching my career take off. I am so grateful for the journey life has taken me on so far.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Getting myself to art school required me to get out of my own way, to have confidence and faith in myself as an artist. This journey requires me to hold myself accountable, and grow. I chose a career path that is unconventional.
I graduated from art school during the pandemic, my final two terms were online. This build up, everything i worked for had no climax, we had an online ceremony and just like that it was over. Cue an existential crisis of epic proportions. Here I am, massively in debt, I graduated with a bachelor of fine art to be a studio artist. No job security, no health insurance, no 401k, what the actual fuck was I thinking. I should have listened to my father when he said take business classes.
I was in a new relationship with my now husband over the years he has proved to be my biggest supporter and has really walked through all of my growing pains with me. At times I have doubted myself he has been the biggest believer in my dreams. When I told him that my goal was to get into two galleries in 2024, he pushed hard and supported me, and essentially learned the ropes of being an artist manager. With his support I didn’t quit, or give up on my dreams even if they felt massively daunting.
This past year my father passed away suddenly, and a few months later his 100 year old mother also passed away in a medical procedure. A lot of truth about our family was revealed, and decades worth of hurt, pain and complicated family dynamics came to light.
I was in a place of complete dysregulation. My nervous system has been in fight or flight mode and I was crashing and burning. I didn’t recognize myself anymore, my coping mechanisms and emotional regulation was that of my younger traumatized self. I was forced to acknowledge that I was still running from the trauma of my mothers death, I was now processing, angry and grieving the complicated relationship I had with my father.
My relationship with myself was holding me back.
I was desperately in need of professional help and I sought out my therapist Michal. I have been working with my therapist for almost a year now, she’s changed my life. I am such an advocate for therapy and seeking out mental health help, especially coming from a home in which it was highly stigmatized. I am so grateful for all the tools I have picked up with her with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Mindfullness, Meditation and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Mentally I feel like I unpacked all my bags at once, its a little messy, slightly unhinged, but the growth, progress and healing work I am doing to solidify and create a peaceful powerhouse in the face of any storm is well worth it. I am grateful for the opportunity to tear apart my foundation with brutal honesty and accountability to create a deeper bond within myself and forgive and release those who failed me as a child.
As an artist my work is vulnerable and deeply personal, sharing it with the world around me is opening myself up to critique on all levels. Not everyone is going to like what I have to say, or feel like my art has any weight to it. I have had to work hard and stay true to my vision no matter what obstacle in my path, or hurtful comment someone leave. Through therapy and taking an active role learning and understanding my mental health I am paving my own way.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am a multi disciplinary fine artist. My current focus is analog collage. Under my artist name Honey, I create hand-cut analog collages from vintage sources such as Playboy and Hustler magazines, architecture books, and ephemera… transforming them into layered critiques of gender, power, and media. My surreal collage work fuses sacred architecture, nature, feminist reclamation, and cheeky subversion.
My art reframes depictions of women once cast as objects of the male gaze into figures of agency and strength, blending surrealism, psychedelia, and theatrical staging into a language of its own. Recurring motifs such as illusion paper (a signal to pay attention), vintage televisions (symbols of media’s grip on perception), as well as striped tentacles (extensions of the myself within my work… dismantling, comforting, or disrupting as needed) to create a signature visual world that is immediately recognizable.
My collages explore themes of bodily autonomy, spirituality, sexuality, grief, and the weight of inherited narratives. They confront patriarchal traditions and purity culture, often weaving in references to historical art and literature… Caravaggio, Rubens, Manet, Dalí, Poe, not as homage, but as reimaginings, reframings, and confrontations. I would say that my voice and the way I layer paper, sets me apart from others.
I am very proud to be showing in galleries in Los Angeles, from La Luz De Jesus to The Hive. I am also very proud of my acceptance to The Other Art Fair in Feb. 2026
How do you think about luck?
This is an interesting questions. I believe in a saying “Whose to say what’s good or bad.”
Luck is what we make it, Luck is found in how we tune in to the universe. Luck is found in how we look at situations, and react to them. There is a lesson, an opportunity to grow, change and evolve in everything.
Some situations are out of my hands, if I decide something is bad luck, I am attracting that energy into my life, accepting it as bad, instead of taking it as a sign where can I change, grow or asking how can I pivot.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.mystrangehoney.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mystrangehoney?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
