Mia Christopher’s brightly saturated,
playful compositions feature an imaginative, free-wheeling world of stacks:
stacked people, stacked animals, stacked stones, stacked shapes. Long-limbed
men, women and cats pile, contort and consort in abstract planes to form
sculptural shapes; assisting each other to form human Jenga towers, or partnering
up to accomplish their building or balancing tasks. In Mia’s art, life is a
juggling act of varying degrees of fairness or difficulty: Some figures seem
besieged and tense (holding onto ferns,
ropes or brightly-colored balls for dear life), others seem to soar out of the
picture plane with no effort whatsoever.
We’ve asked Mia, a talented
multidisciplinary artist and avid cat-lover, to answer some questions for HAND!
Q: Where are you located now and can you describe your environment to us and how you ended up there?
A: The condensed, but still long, answer to this question is that I currently live in a converted studio apartment in an old Victorian building in San Francisco's Mission District. I live and work here, accompanied by my two cats, Bruno and Eloise. I was born in Texas. My family lived there until I was 3 and a half years old, then moved to New Jersey. Then when I was 6 we moved to Northern California. We lived just north of San Francisco up until my family moved to the western Chicago suburbs when I was 14. I lived there until I graduated high school at 17, then I moved to Chicago and started art school at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago My focus at the time was on photography, but I felt I needed to explore other practices and take some time off of school to figure out what it really was I wanted to do and where I wanted to be. After a year and a half at SAIC I ended up moving back to Northern California on my own and taking printmaking classes at City College of San Francisco. I eventually transferred to California College of the Arts in Oakland, and will be receiving my BFA from there in the Spring of 2012.
Q: What influences or inspires your drawing practice?
A: Color, balance, relationships, exploration, reading, quiet time, loud time.
Q: Would you consider drawing to be your primary medium or mode of expression? If not, what is and how does drawing supplement your practice?
A: Yes I would. I love to draw! I keep sketchbooks that I draw in all of the time obsessively. My biggest guilty pleasure is buying brand new pens. Drawing a lot is key for me no matter what it is I end up making. Even as my work evolves into different areas and mediums, drawing will likely always remain an integral part of my process.
Q. Outside of drawing, what do you enjoy doing? How do you spend your time? Where do you like to go?
A: In San Francisco I like going to places with beautiful views like Dolores Park, Buena Vista, the Marin Headlands, Ocean Beach and the Pacific Coastal Trail, and so many more places. I live in the Mission District which is full of activity, so whenever I have been holed up in my studio for too many days I can walk around my neighborhood and quickly get a fresh perspective. I am also really into cuddling with my cats and eating brunch.
Q. What artists, living or dead, would you like to have at your dinner table or go get a drink/coffee/tea with? Whom would you ideally like to show with?
A: I would love to have drinks and desserts with I would say Maira Kalman, Kiki Smith, Miranda July, Monique Prieto, Jeffrey Brown, Jockum Nordstrom and Mamma Andersson. I will cut off the list at seven but I could go on and on! In reality though, I am quite shy and that dinner would be just about the end of my nerves!
Whom would I ideally like to show with? There are so many amazing people working right now that I dream of someday showing with. I am happy to show with artists who work hard and put their all into their work and truly believe in what they are doing.
Thanks Mia! You can find more of Mia Christopher’s work at the following links:
Website: http://www.miachristopher.com
Flickr: flickr.com/readinginbed
thank you mia and kimi !
ReplyDeleteits great to read these posts , they are precious , to gain a sense of who the artistsbehind their work are ....a little about their lives makes hand drawing so much more alive .
Mia ...your colours are sublime , so to your line .....keep up the good work :)
Hi Jane,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments! We are happy that our artists and readers are enjoying the Q&A's, we are always excited to read them ourselves.
Hopefully we will be able to showcase your Q&A as well sometime soon. :)
Best, HAND