All About You...Katharine Hawthrone

This week we are going to take a look back at one of the choreographer/performance artists that participated in the August 13th performance evening at SooVAC:

1. What is your first art related childhood memory?
Creative movement classes at the local community center – my parents say I took dancing much more seriously than other children. I also used to dance in my driveway a lot, to the great amusement of our neighbors.

2. As an artist, who is your biggest influence?
My biggest influence/inspiration is the body in motion and physical concepts from the natural world. I use my background and training in physics to explore and conceptualize the world around me, which I enact through motion.

3. What did you listen to while creating this piece?
Christopher Jette (the composer) and I listened to a lot of Roy Orbison while making SoundLines, the piece we presented at SooVAC. The piece itself uses a wide range of sounds, from drones to granular synthesis. I often choreograph material in silence and later adapt it to the sound score.

4. Name three unexpected items one would find in your studio.
Radio & radio transmitter, headlamp, a bag of fresh fruit

5. What is your least favorite famous work of art?
I’ve never really enjoyed Mozart – I’ve always felt like I was missing something with respect to his compositions, it sounds like elevator music to me.

6. What art do you have hanging on your walls?
I love maps, strange things with stories, and Americana. In my apartment we currently have a STOP sign repurposed as a coffee table, antlers, car license plates, and topographical maps.

7. What are you working on now?
In early 2011 I created a piece called Lumen, in which the performers wear and control a small light source. Right now I am working on creating a partner work to Lumen, called Lux, to further explore light as a spatial and movement element. Both works are part of my larger investigation with how to integrate technology into performance. I’m fascinated by how to take a technical element that is normally external to movement performance (light) and deeply embed it into the performer’s interactions.

8. What will the title of your retrospective at BAM be?
Techné (the ancient root word of technology)

Thanks Katharine!

For more about Hawthorne's performance at SooVAC visit HERE.
For more about her work visit HERE.

All About You...Melissa Loop

Read all about Melissa Loop now showing at SooVAC:

1. What is your first art related childhood memory?

I remember having to decorate these cardboard doll figures in the first grade. I made a ballerina and I was deeply concerned that people might think she was bald on the back of her head unless I could indicate otherwise. In the end, I made a ponytail on the top of her head (hey it was the 80's) out of fringed construction paper and then bent the paper so it went behind her head. My teachers thought it was great and put it in all kinds of those little art shows, but they all kept straightening her hair so that her ponytail stuck way up on the top of her head like she was an idiot and I found it infuriating that it was never displayed correctly.

2. As an artist, who is your biggest influence?

David Hockney has slowly taken over as my biggest influence. I love how he still embraces all of these new technologies in his art.

3. What did you listen to in the studio while creating this show?

Lots of audio books. I had no idea that historical novels were so captivating. Plus I now know a boat load about the English Monarchy.

4. Name three unexpected items one would find in your studio.

I have a bunch of moss, model train figures, and these glittered plastic fern pieces from Michaels.

5. What is your least favorite famous work of art?

The Mona Lisa

6. What art do you have hanging on your walls?

Lots of random stuff. Pictures of ships and birds from old books I have a shelf with a kinds of vintage and Japanese toys. Not much else though cause we moved last April and I can't ever decide where to hang anything.

7. What are you working on now?

I have another exhibition opening in Portland OR in just a few weeks so I am finishing up a large group of paintings that are a continuation of the Utopia Jet-Setter series. I am really excited to start a group of much larger paintings this winter. They will be abound 5x8 ft...maybe larger.

8.What will the title of your retrospective at MOMA be

Wait...I have a retrospective at the MOMA? Fantasy Island: The World's Greatest Hits.

Come by SooVAC to see Melissa Loop's work in person, up until

October 23rd. And there will be a closing reception Oct. 22nd 6-9pm

More of Loop's work HERE.

Thanks Melissa!

All About You...Kristin Van Loon

We couldn't let the amazing Choreographers/dancers that performed at Soo in August go with out getting them to answer the all about you questionnaire. First we get some insight into Kristin Van Loon.

1. What is your first art related childhood memory?
Lying in a crib and hearing my dad practice with his barbershop quartet.

2. As an artist, who is your biggest influence?
Duchamp for the seed that influenced…John Cage, Steve Paxton, etc. etc. etc.
I always have a pet artist. Right now it's John Baldessari.

3. What did you listen to while creating this piece?
These three songs over and over and over and over and over:

George Harrison: "My Sweet Lord"
Simon & Garfunkel: "Keep the Customer Satisfied"
Chicago: "Make Me Smile"

4. Name three unexpected items one would find in your studio.
-a giant Thomas Hirschhorn 1999 wall calendar
-a ping pong table
-a ten-foot pole
(all figured prominently in this piece)

5. What is your least favorite famous work of art?
-the cow public sculptures

6. What art do you have hanging on your walls?
My walls are craptastic. From where I sit, I see: Sean Smuda photos (real deal), Bill Starr photos (real deal), xerox art by Louise Odes Neaderland (real deal), Elliott Durko Lynch mail art (real deal), plus cheep reproductions by Gehard Richter and David Salle and Damien Hirst.

7. What are you working on now?
"Show Me Sun Blindness and I'll Show You a Strong Bank" (with Arwen Wilder as HIJACK): a sextet for Zenon's Dance Zone

and a new, as yet untitled HIJACK duet for the Walker's Choreographers' Evening in November

8. What will the title of your retrospective at BAM be?
Twenty Five Hundred Dollars

Thanks Kristin!
To see more of Kristin Van Loon's work visit HERE.