In August 2008, young visual communicator Michael Hawkins, who is based in Cambridge, England, spent a month in our Mango Tree House. En route, he helped us develop a partnership with New York's Gershwin Hotel. And while here, he jumped bridges in Sugarloaf, swam with sea turtles over the reef, collaborated with jazz musicians, installed a new mural at the Armory, and took best set design in our One Night Stand 24-hour theatre project. Hawkins returned to the United Kingdom with a rich connection to our island community, and a sense that something special is happening at the Southernmost Point. TSKW executive director, Eric Holowacz, conducted this follow-up interview with the artist by email...
Holowacz: We are still in our first year of founding our visiting artist program, and you and a few others are serving as pioneers. Coming from so far away, and for the first time, what were your early ideas of Key West?
Hawkins: My first impression was off. I made the mistake that I am sure a lot of people do, when they arrive for the first time...I ended up fraternising in the touristy part of upper Duval street, with outsiders among the tacky bars and t-shirt shops. That whole part of town seemed rather culturally deprived, and more of a gimmick than a genuine spectacle. Being searched for firearms upon entering one establishment was an unusual experience...though I quickly found out the real key West was quite different to all this.
Holowacz: Did you study up or read about our island in planning your residency?
Hawkins: Yes. It made for interesting reading. Key West seems to have always drawn interesting and eccentric people who are not concerned with conventional standards of living, and I really like that. And I love the stories about the scuppering of passing ships, you call them wreckers. The salvaging expeditions and the resultant profiteering, making the town rich at one point, so that the island's infastructure was in on the game.
Holowacz: August is usually a slow time in Key West, but you managed to get involved in all sorts of creative and social activities. Recount some of your favorite experiences while here.
Hawkins: Camping on Dry Tortugas was like another world to me. Live action painting at Midsummer Nights Dream, while Skipper Kripitz and and company laid down the soundtrack, that was a blast. Another One Night Stand was a very special project that brought together local writers, directors, artists as well as actors and actresses for an intense period of collaboration. I felt honoured to be a part of the collaborative spirit here.
Holowacz: A major aspect of your residency involved the creation of a 15-foot panel that is now on view in the Armory stairwell. It employs your unique graphic style and visual language. Tell us what went into "The Great Promise," as this newest mural is now called.
Hawkins: On coming to the island I have been reading a lot of work by Swiss psychoanalyst and sociologist, Erich Fromm. In works such as The Art of Loving and To have or to be, Fromm articulates the challenges facing post-modern man with a great depth of insight and sensitivity. The mural is a visual interpretation of some of Fromm's ideas. It is the first in what will eventually become a tryptych with the amassed title: The Great Promise/ Its Failure/ New Alternatives.
The Great Promise represents the grandeur of the industrial age and celebrates its marvelous technological and intellectual achievements. It acknowledges the interwining of spirituality with science and how technological advances -especially in the realm of communication have promised us a more interconnected planet. It also looks at a few of our age's promises: unlimited progress, the domination of nature, material abundance, the substitution of the computer for the human mind and the machine for animal and human energy. These promises seem to suggest that we will become more like gods...and consequently, that we are due a great amount of happiness to the greatest number of our people.
The piece now installed at the Armory is a celebration. The next, Its failure, will be a critique. It didnt feel right to do the second part in key West this time around...which in my opinion has a large amount of its population informed and aware of some of the troubles that face us over the next few hundred years. I want to do its failure somewhere where people need to appreciate its message more; like New York.
Holowacz: On your way here, you spent 5 days in New York. In advance of your arrival, The Studios of Key West was able to forge a new partnership with the owner of the Gershwin Hotel, a creative accommodation, with its own milieu, near Tin Pan Alley. This short stay afforded you a launching pad into the city's arts scene. Tell us about those five days, and your first sojourn in the Big Apple.
Hawkins: It was great. I did the rounds and had a wonderful host in Suzanne, the hotel's owner who has long supported artists in the city. I took in the Chelsea art district, the MoMA, the Met, the Guggenheim. I talked to a few galleries and made a few connections which could be useful for the future...learnt a lot about the art world during my short time there. I realized, in a sort of epiphany, that if I want to make a living and therefore a career out of being an artist (which I do), then I need to start thinking big. As in large paintings that sell for major money. You've got to actually go out there and foot it with the big boys. Of course you've got to have something to say and a way to say it that resonates for people first, but i think I've got that part sorted.
Holowacz: You are presently based in Cambridge, England, and making the rounds of European cultural centers and gallery networks. Tell us about your work and projects there.
Hawkins: I recently completed a collaboration with The Curwen Studio...an artists' printmaking studio who have a rich history of artists' limited editions here. We collaborated on six editions, which have now been picked up by London's Eyestorm gallery for representation. That said, as an outsider coming to the UK and trying to crack the art world, it has been a good challenge so far.
My next project is a cross-disciplinary collaborative residency, with a group called the Betabeat Collective in the South of France come October. This will probably culminate in a music/action collaboration act with one of the musicians I meet there. It will be something that builds on the work I did at the Midsummer Night's event in Key West, and previously at the arts centre in Wellington, New Zealand.
Holowacz: At 26, you are one of the younger visiting artists to be hosted by TSKW. You grew up in New Zealand, and made an impression on the art scene there before moving to the UK last year. Describe your development Down Under, and the things you were involved in as an emerging Wellington-based artist.
Hawkins: During my time in Wellington I worked full time as an Art and Art History teacher, all the while maintaining a studio at the city's new arts centre and working energetically around that to develop new projects. One, The Rise of the Creative Economy was a site-specific work, placed in the middle of Wellington's Civic Square and Town Hall, which comprised a white shipping container covered in my visual messages and symbology. It was an attempt to celebrate the local creative industry in Wellington, at a time when things were really taking off for a lot of people. Peter Jackson had just finished Lord of The Rings and was starting on his King Kong remake; bands were taking off; and there was a feeling among the creative community that a lot of opportunities were starting to show themselves for more and more people. The imagery on the shipping container reflected the city's local creative industry, and the inside became a makeshift gallery. It held close to a hundred boxes, also painted white then covered in creative imagery and slogans....as if ready for export. The work was placed in the main square opposite the Wellington City Gallery, the main contemporary art institution there. It was a great spot for The Rise of the Creative Economy.
Another project entitled the Rock Show, was part of the Wellington Fringe Festival. It involved a collaboration between a local indie-band The Resistance, and myself. They played live, as I performed three large-scale action paintings inside a gallery. It was the birthseed of what took place at Midsummer Nights Dream, during my first week in Key West.
Holowacz: Key West is a unique place, with an attitude and philosophy much different than the American mainland. What is your take on the social and cultural milieu down in the Conch Republic.
Hawkins: It made a huge impression on me. There is an acceptance and celebration of difference on the island that puts many other places in the world to shame. I love the fact that a lot of people have come to the island from somewhere else, with the intent to stay for a short time, and find themselves still here 20 years later. There is something romantic about that, the way the place holds onto people and keeps them happy.
Holowacz: Who are your influences and what creative figures, environments or movements were important to your development as an artist?
Keith Haring has always been a great role model in terms of the way he has gone about his work and life. Growing up in New Zealand, as a standard Kiwi kid, enabled me to experience a genuine connection with nature and the land. It's just something about New Zealand's rural and agrarian base. I now realize that a lot of people live their lives completely disenfranchised from the earth and have no relationship with the natural world. As I travel the world, this aspect seems special...and important to who I am.
Holowacz: Now that you are back in England, what are the three things you miss most about our small island?
Hawkins:
1. The people. To everyone who made my stay special, thank you...you guys rock.
2. Snorkeling, almost every day...and Fort Zach.
3. The weather...yes really. My summer ended when I got to back to England. I heart sunshine, and Key West has it.
