Member Spotlight: Grace Exhibition Space/Jill McDermid-Hokanson/Erik Hokanson (Brooklyn, NYC)

Each week, members of the network vote for one of the top 10 most active CPnetwork artists to be featured on the home page and interviewed for the blog. We would like to introduce you to last weeks leader, Grace Exhibition Space/Jill McDermid-Hokanson/Erik Hokanson (Brooklyn, NYC)

Grace Exhibition Space is Directed by Jill McDermid-Hokanson and Erik Hokanson
Erik Hokanson was introduced to Performance Art after meeting Jill McDermid, while The Grace Exhibition Space participated in the Fountain Art Fair in Miami, where Mr. Hokanson was one of the organizers. Since then, they have participated together in many international performance art festivals as artists and curators in Europe, Asia, Central and South America and work together as a married team to run, curate and direct Grace Exhibition Space

Can you tell us a little about your history and your performative concerns.
Grace Exhibition Space presents over 30 curated live performance art exhibitions each year, showcasing new work by more than 120 performance artists annually from across the United States and the world. Grace Exhibition Space, opened in 2006, is devoted exclusively to the support and exhibiting of Performance Art – we offer an opportunity to experience visceral and challenging performance works by the current generation of international performance artists, whether emerging, mid career or established. Being a Brooklyn loft, our events are presented on the floor, not on a stage, dissolving the boundary between artist and viewer. This is how performance art is meant to be experienced, and our mission is the glorification of performance art.

What projects are you working on now?
Archiving 5 years of Grace Exhibition Space: We are currently working on archiving our past material (video, photos, artifacts) – finding and collecting all of our past material, creating folders and labeling everything

LIVE ART FRIDAYS! Every Friday, Doors 8:30 and performances beginning at 9:00 we host 3-4 original, new live performance art pieces. and on presenting Jeff and Vela from Boston, Miles (a new artist for us) from Brooklyn and Danielle Fischer who is in NYC from Israel. She was student of Adina Bar-On who was scheduled to present at GES this Friday, but for personal reason must postpone until spring.

Grace Exhibition Space Workshop Series: Grace Exhibition Space teaches the process behind creating and understanding performance art through a series of action- and exercise- based workshops. This educational series introduces performance art practices to all levels of participants. Within a group context, individual participants are guided through their own development and engagement with performance art, through a first-hand exploration of performance art techniques.

Tell us a little bit about your members?
Our members are people who have to come to us because they are performance artists and/or because they are interested in seeing and learning more about performance art. Our members are artists who are a part of the larger, global, performance art community. We have some members who are friends and some whom we had never met and they knew nothing about performance art, and now come to every event. Our members are a mix of people, from all cultural and economic backgrounds.

What was the last piece that you saw that you would recommend to the Network and why?
Jill: The last pieces that floored me and left me speechless were Edwin Torres, Gim Gwang Cheol, Nyugen E. Smith, Esther Nef fand her Occupy Grace Exhibition Space, Rafael Sanchez, Arianne Foks and SP38 drinking Esther Neff’s blood. We work very hard on curating and become attached to every artist and their work. Plus, I am overwhelmed by the intensity that every artists brings to Grace Space, I am overly excited and nervous for every event and the energy of the pieces is the storm that blows around me thrilling every part of me. Sounds a bit too visceral, maybe? Well, I am passionate about performance art, it only takes a minute at Grace Space to feel the passion.