Interview by Jimon

1-Tell me a little bit about your background?  I am a native Californian. My father was a minister and my mother is a political activist.

2-Where do you call home?  Santa Monica, CA

3-Why make art?  I think I would be dead if I weren’t making art.

4-What inspires you the most?  Discovery during the art making process and connections to people with whom I am collaborating.

5-How would you describe Mimi Haddon?  A creative spirit who has her hands in many arenas of the world of expression including photography, soft sculpture, costume, dance and video.

6-You started as a photographer, how did the costume design aspect start?  Costume crept in gradually into the work.  When I first began photography I was looking at the work of Man Ray.  I didn’t have access to any couture clothing, so I would fashion my own temporary gowns out of lampshades and fabric remnants.  For a while I was really into lifestyle photography which now gives me the hives.  I found my way to costume through my work with Getty Images.  I art directed and dreamed up my own shoots and costume was often the driving force.  Sometimes I would rent costumes but often I would hack them with basic DIY methods.

7-You create sculptures using fabric, what is the process in creating these works of art?  I’ve long been into crafting and fiber art.  My grandmother was a big quilter and sewer and I would do a lot of hand stitching when I visited her during the summer as a child.  When I was pregnant with my daughter I made a quilt for her and spent countless hours on it.  I kind of set all of that aside while I raised my children and considered myself a ‘photographer’ for many years.  Unfortunately at the time I had this notion of categorizing my artistic interests and didn’t see how I could blend all of my passions.  About ten years ago I fell hard for origami and the meditative potential of paper folding.  I think this was my entry into fiber sculpture.  I read in a book that if one makes 1,000 cranes they are meant to have good luck.  Then it stated, “But who has time to fold 1,000 cranes?”  I took this as a challenge, telling myself that time is a major component in the art making process, so let’s see what it is like to play with time as a factor and have a physical quality to represent it.  It took a few years for me to land at CSULB working on my MFA in Fiber Art, but that idea carried over.  While I was in school I learned a ton of basic hand skills in the  textile/craft world.  I experimented with materials not intended for craft and really appreciated the potential for creating random pieces that were a collaboration of hand/body, time and material.  What I ended up with were a bunch of physical sketches or soft sculptures that really had no substance on their own.  But I had spent so much time on them I couldn’t toss them.  So I started to compile them on a dress form and created temporary soft sculptures of imagined archetypes.  It was really a magical moment that occurred over a 3-4 month period.  I would get up, see my son off to school, set up my dress form in his room and pile and pile and pile my pieces, furniture and always something that belonged to him into these temporary sculptures.  Often my cat Stash would silently glide into the room and I would document this ephemeral moment with my camera.  Much like Andy Goldworthy does with his incredible pieces in nature.  Then by the time my son would get home from school, the entity was gone as if nothing every happened.  This work is entitled “Talmasque” or shape-shifter and can be seen on my website: www.mimihaddon.com

8-Looking at the images of these sculptures, photography takes a back seat, does this bother you?  Not at all.  I’ve come to realize for myself, that photography is a tool like a Xerox machine.  The content is the most important.  In my photography for The Palace Wild, I use very basic lighting.  The best of course is when I’m mixing the sunlight with the strobe.

9-First thing you think/do in the morning? Last thing at night?  First thing in the morning is I think about all of the places I am teaching that day and what needs to be in order and the last thing at night is Thank you.

10-If you weren’t an artist, what would you have liked to be?  I could have a small café that sells home-made soup and bread in Mendocino.

11-What is your definition of success?  Having faith in the creative process. Realizing that it is an experience of channeling, therefore a powerful collaboration with something that cannot be seen or defined.

12-What forth-coming projects and or exhibitions do you have scheduled?  The Palace Wild will show at Photoville Brooklyn starting September 12^th.  I am currently an artist in residence at The Camera Obscura until mid November.  My goal is to get The Palace Wild published as a book and turn it into a musical.

13-If you could have dinner with 3 artists living/dead who would be at your table?  Louise Bourgeois, Hilma af klint, Claud Cahun, Eva Hesse.

14-Name three things you can’t live without in your studio?  My Heavy Duty Stapler, Sewing Needle, Shinhan paints.

15-How would someone find you on social media?  @mimihaddon and @ghostsinthepalace

16-Anything else you’d like to mention that I didn’t ask?  So much.