Hattie Grimm
Birds migrate thousands of miles into the unknown together, trusting there are better conditions ahead. When I stand on the shore of Lake Michigan and the only other people around me are birds, I learn that my animal body has this same instinctual wisdom. So I draw with curiosity, rather than control. Like my body knows what to do.
Painting these wooden forms helps to make visible this often quiet bodily communication. It can show me the sparks of excitement glowing in my chest or the powerful currents of grief washing through my heart. It is a small but steady practice to observe my insides with more gentleness and curiosity.
To share this practice, I create participatory rituals for people to answer their own inner curiosity and creative desires. I have invited people to draw their own bird, to write down a new beginning, to imagine what liberation feels like in their body, and to play a drum in a parade with a giant bird. Moving like starlings in a murmuration, or geese in a V formation, we can explore new shapes as a collective, practicing how we want to relate to each other in a liberated future.
Hattie Grimm is an artist and educator based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Inspired bthe instincts of birds and the natural world, Grimm’s work explores how we can be more receptive to our own animal bodies’ intuitive wisdom. With a BA in Art Education from UW-Madison, she taught art to middle and high school students for four years and has led art workshops across the state, including the Chazen Museum of Art, Museum of Wisconsin Art, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has shown her paintings, sculptures, and puppet parades throughout Wisconsin.
Process
My essential tools and materials are my paint crayons and acrylic paints, good markers, wood from the junk pile, and my jig saw. I like to light a candle to be intentional about opening the portal to make the thing. I like to work on many things at once so that if/when one process stops flowing, I can move onto something else before I get frustrated or overthink and judge. I usually play music or sometimes a podcast for myself, or sometimes if I forget I’m wearing my ear protection headphones, I end up in silence for a long time. It feels good when I have a dance break at some point while I’m working.
A day in the studio usually ends when I’m no longer interested in any of the projects that are out on the table. I need to be able to see everything I’m working on at once, but not have clutter. Often these desires contradict each other and then I spend twenty minutes obsessively moving things from one side of the room to another. This is when I know it’s time to go home asap.
Influences
I am inspired by good illustration, by things that are diy, by children’s drawings, by my sketchbook, by any form of art that is earnest. I feel inspired by water - by Lake Michigan, and the beautiful streams, waterfalls, lakes, and oceans I have visited in my current travels. I am inspired by whatever makes my heart feel open - bird taking flight, bath in an icy river.
I am very inspired by puppet makers and especially Bread and Puppet, a puppet company and printing press in Vermont. Immediately after I saw one of their shows in Mazomanie, Wisconsin, I decided I needed to build a giant bird puppet and so I did.
And when I feel uninspired, I usually just stop making things until I’m ready again.
Challenges
I move through creative blocks by consulting with other people. My teachers, my friends, the lake. Sometimes I end up trying too hard to solve the problem by figuring it out when the answer is really just time.
If I start hating something I made, I know I have to hide it from myself so I can’t fixate. I will literally put the piece behind something else so I can’t stare at it and have a tantrum lol. Then I come back when I’m ready again and scribble more lovingly until something appears that I like better.
Reflection
What’s next! I am ready to learn again. Last year, I built my giant bird puppet with the help of some very generous wisdom from Emily Downes’ (one of Milwaukee’s puppet extraordinaires) and her UWM Puppet Club as well as a few Bread and Puppet zines. After building the giant bird and parading with it a handful of times this year, I understand how I want to rebuild it better, and how I want to learn more about where puppets can go and what they can do. Perhaps in my future there is a puppet apprenticeship, or a collaboration with people who want to make a play with puppets or something else that sounds exciting. If you are reading this and you have an idea you should tell me! :) I am so thrilled to have a residency upcoming with Arts at Large in Milwaukee this spring where I will have time to explore many of these things. I also really want to get good at speaking Spanish.
