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.

All About You...Jehra Patrick

Here is some q & a action from Jehra Patrick, the last but definitely not least of the Untitled 8 artists.

1. What is your first art related childhood memory?
My Mom has a crayon drawing I made labeled at 3 months old, but my earliest memories are of my parents helping me and my sister draw mermaids. Then we’d cut them out and use them as paper dolls.

2. As an artist, who is your biggest influence? My influences are constantly changing and evolving. Lately I’ve been looking at lots of German painters: Eberhard Havekost, Matthias Weischer and other New Leipzig painters and Oehlen Albert. I’ve been conceptually interested in Louise Lawler, Michael Asher and New Institutionalism. I love the work of Richard Prince, Gerhard Richter, and Sigmar Polke, for the various ways in which these artists have pushed limits of painting, picture theory, and authorship.

3. What did you listen to in the studio while creating this show?
Big Boi, Burnt by the Sun, Red Vendetta, Atmosphere, Devil’s Night Radio (a mainstay in my studio), Beach House, Beck, Sonic Youth, Wu Tang Clan, Sleigh Bells, and lots of reggae.

4. Name three unexpected items one would find in your studio. An antique vanity, a gun range target and a guitar and amp

5. What is your least favorite famous work of art? I was never a big Tino Sehgal fan… but, what can I say, I like objects.

6. What art do you have hanging on your walls?
Local artists Doug Forbes, Margi Grill, Abigail Woods Anderson and Indiana artist Quinton Fletcher; vintage prints by Goya, Toulouse Lautrec, and a few anonymous works; rock art posters by Kozik and lots of Aesthetic Apparatus pieces; found paintings and objects; and some of my own older works. I would love nothing more than to expand my art collection – especially of MN artists – I have so many on my wish list!

7. What are you working on now?
I am continuing to work in both painting and photography using the museum and its visual archives as my subject. To share my process: I’m big into reading and research, which are just as integral to my practice as production. At present, I’ve been delving in to the Walker Art Center’s visual archives from the 1940’s to 1960’s, reading Words Without Pictures (various contributors) and have been grazing on On the Museum’s Ruins (Douglas Crimp, photographs by Louise Lawler) for the last 6 months… while looking to German painters for formal strategies. Oh, and browsing the New Museum’s visual archives – especially from the 1980s. I could keep gabbing on my interests, but the short answer is that a few larger paintings as well as some mid-sized works are on the way!

8. What will the title of your retrospective at MOMA be? Ah, man… I have no idea… I’m sure the title would be the last thing I’d think about.

Thank Jehra! To see more of Jehra's work visit HERE.

All About You...Erin Hernsberger

Now for some Q & A from Untitled 8 artist Erin Hernsberger...nothing like a little grotesque beauty.

1. What is your first art related childhood memory? Sitting on the carpet of my grandparents house, watching my grandfather draw. I was about four years old.

2. As an artist, who is your biggest influence?
Ava Medieta, Jenny Saville, Eva Hesse are the artists that come to mind. And Anish Kapoor and Ernesto Neto. And National Geographic’s “Inside the Living Body.”

3. What did you listen to in the studio while creating this show?
Gillian Welch and CocoRosie

4. Name three unexpected items one would find in your studio.
A cactus, a framed circular goose print from a garage sale that reminds me of my childhood home, and a stack of vacuum sealed animal parts (maybe that one is expected)

5. What is your least favorite famous work of art? Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe. 6. What art do you have hanging on your walls?
An Indian quilt made of textiles from wedding gowns, yarn drawings from Goodwill, a photo by Areca Roe, a photo by Amy Stevens, and two framed black and white photos from past students.

7. What are you working on now?
I am currently building and photographing still-lifes dealing with various medical/surgical approaches to the interior body/exterior body.

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

To see more of Erin's work visit HERE.

All About You...Emily Bennett Beck

Now for some q & a goodness from Emily Bennett Beck, Untitled 8 artist:

1. What is your first art related childhood memory?
I had the fortune to attend an after school art club in the 5th grade. My art teacher, Ms. Schmidt, had all these wonderful art posters for us to leaf through and I found this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkie_(Lawrence_painting), stared at it, put it away, and began a painting of it back at my desk. When I was done with my painting, went back to the stack of art posters and when I flipped to the real ‘Pinkie,’ I felt as though I could literally feel the wind blowing and the ocean roaring at me. I was SO ashamed of my own work. My work felt dead in comparison.

2. As an artist, who is your biggest influence?
All the fabulous contemporary figurative painters of course; John Currin, Elizabeth Peyton, Lisa Yuskavage and Dawn Mellors, to name a few. The pre-raphelites continue to amaze me, and Sargent and Whistler. I am influenced by so many artists- it’s hard to name them all.

3. What did you listen to in the studio while creating this show?
I rely on Pandora quite a lot… I’ve been listening to a lot of George Micheal and 80s romantic pop ballads this year. I’ve been trying to channel lots of teen angst.

4. Name three unexpected items one would find in your studio. I have lots of old ‘How to Paint’ magazines and books from the 1960s. They’re very instructive.

5. What is your least favorite famous work of art?
I can’t come up with an answer for this one…. I’m stumped.

6. What art do you have hanging on your walls?
Lots of paintings by my late grandmother in-law Phyllis Beck, and lots of work from fellow artist friends.

7. What are you working on now?
Several series at once. Gouache paintings, digital paintings. Some of my new work deals with the desperations of youth, and some with the desperations of middle age.

8. What will the title of your retrospective at MOMA be?
Probably something campy like, “Painted Ladies.”

Thanks Emily!

To see more of Emily's work visit HERE.
Untitled 8 is up through August 21st.

All About You...Erika Lynne Hanson

Now for a little q & a with Erika Lynne Hanson now exhibiting in Untitled 8.

1. What is your first art related childhood memory?
Learning how to use a bead loom

2. As an artist, who is your biggest influence?
Nietzsche, Bruce Nauman, and Thomas Cole

3. What did you listen to in the studio while creating this show? Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (first 4 books)

4. Name three unexpected items one would find in your studio.
Buckets of water (from collecting ice melt run off), A Huge Loom, a dollar bill on the floor.

5. What is your least favorite famous work of art?
I find Lichtenstein paintings pretty annoying

6. What art do you have hanging on your walls?
Exclusively landscape prints and paintings that have been collected from thrift and antique stores.

7. What are you working on now?
new weavings, sculptures and videos for my upcoming exhibition The Icebergs, in Kansas City this fall

8. What will the title of your retrospective at MOMA be?
Sabotage: transitory objects, microscopic cataclysms.

Thanks Erika!

To see more of Erika Lynne Hanson's work visit HERE. Untitled 8 will be on view through August 21st.