Bio
Lara Hanson is a visual and performance artist from St. Paul, Minnesota. She is known for her calligraphic drawings of the human body in motion. Working most often with ink, chalk and graphite, she endeavors to capture the essence of the mover.
Hanson has drawn and performed with a number of musicians, including saxophonist Nathan Hanson (St. Paul), drummer Federico Ughi (New York), percussionists Mirtha Pozzi and Pablo Cueco (Paris, France), cellist Michelle Kinney and tabla player Gary Waryan (of Jello Slave, Minneapolis) and cellist Didiet Petit (Paris, France).
Many dance companies, including Black Label Movement (Minneapolis), Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company (New York), Eiko and Koma (New York), Cie MF (Lyon, France) and Compagnia Tiziana Arnaboldi (Ascona, Switzerland), have been the subjects of her drawing. Her drawings have been spontaneously created in front of audiences in Paris, New York, and Minneapolis and have been shown in galleries from New York to Bologna to Hong Kong. She has been an artist in residence at the American Dance Festival, Festival Danza Urbana (Bologna, Italy) and with the St. Paul Almanac’s Lowertown Reading Jam (St. Paul).
Statement
I am an interdisciplinary artist. In my work I combine the disciplines of drawing and movement to create performance pieces. The performances explore the mantra Life = Movement/Movement = Life. Movement, as the term applies to my work, refers not only to physical movement but includes intellectual movement (the workings of the mind and imagination) and spiritual movement (the stirring of the soul).
Dance embodies a direct connection to the expression of life; the human body has the ability to communicate immediately what is in the mind and the soul. But dance is an ephemeral art form. You see it, and then it is gone forever. My art practice centers on finding the connection between outer movement (the physical body) and inner movement (the creative and spiritual body). I observe and draw dancers, collaborate with dancers and choreographers, and am continually working to deepen my understanding of how my own body moves. My objective is to discover the place where dance and drawing meet and to create a new discipline that blurs their distinction. Dance is linear and temporal, drawing is fixed in time. Drawing can become time-based when the drawing process, like a dance, is performed for an audience. Dance, not just the physical form of the dancers, but also the emotional, intellectual and spiritual expression of the dance, can break out of the bonds of time when its gestures are recorded as line drawn on a sheet of paper.
Collaboration is key to my art practice and has helped balance the interdependence of the elements of my work. The collaborative experience affords me a chance to glean the working methods of other disciplines and apply them to my work. One of the goals of my art practice is to give the drawing process an equal footing with the other performing arts. Collaborating provides an opportunity for the drawing process to be seen alongside dance, music, or the spoken word.
The purpose of my art is to reveal what is beautiful, true and good in this world. We have had enough of fear and violence. I create to defy those who only want to destroy. I am moving toward life. Movement = Life.
Portfolio
Contact
lara[at]larahanson.com