LFP Magazine

INTERVIEW WITH KEVIN O’HANLON by Aaron Lehmann
PHOTOGRAPHS by Temar France

FilmsOnArtists (FOA) is a new media production company based in Chelsea, NYC that creates enlightening and inspirational documentaries about artists around the globe. Their intent is to illuminate and educate via the experiences of the creatives who are interpreting our world. FOA focuses on the subject’s context as content. Each film spotlights an artist who has been shaped by their environment, history, and circumstances and channeled that experience in a creative way. By combining each experience, they hope create a connection between the world’s creative voices. FOA is available to create commissioned films for artists, galleries and commercial and documentary broadcast content.

Gallery Director Kevin O'Hanlon

Kevin O’Hanlon graduated from the College of Journalism in Dublin, Ireland and in Photojournalism from the International Center For Photography, New York. He has directed documentaries and commercials around the world focusing on art and creativity. He has worked in Cambodia, on the Navajo Reservation in the American South West and more recently in Haiti where he created an art program at the Maranatha Orphanage and School in Haiti, bringing art supplies and canvasses and teaching them to paint. The work was then brought to New York and auctioned to raise funds to develop the children’s school and help build their future.

How was “Films on Artists” first conceived? The stated intent of the company is to “illuminate and educate via the experiences of the creatives who are interpreting our world”. Why is it important to hear the artist’s voice and/or narrative behind their works?

I have been making movies since I was a kid so I always have a video camera with me. I’ve worked in the film production business for most of my life and have my own production company. I opened an office in Chelsea 6 years ago and found myself in a very interesting environment filled with creative people from every walk of life. My building, The Chelsea Fine Arts Building, has over 200 spaces occupied by working artists and galleries. I became very good friends with painter and performance artist Theresa Byrnes. We had an immediate connection and have become best friends and are to this day. She has had an amazing life in her native Australia which I learned about from talking with her and from reading her biography “The Divine Mistake.” The more I got to know her the more I realized that she was a force of nature whose life inspires many. But her life and creative efforts were spread out so it took a while to get a sense of her. She has been in a wheelchair since age 16. She also has some difficulty in her speech. I would hear her repeating her story to people over and over and I thought that was such an unnecessary expenditure of her energy, energy she should be spending on her work. I decided to make a film, so she could answer everyone’s questions very efficiently by handing them a DVD or pointing them to the documentary on her site. I found tons of archival video footage about her including performances and interviews on Australian TV. Then I shot her creating several new series of works and documented everything from the perspective of her daily creative process. When the film was done, it was her whole life’s energy synopsized, so when she met people who wanted to know about her she could just hand them a DVD. We had a screening in my gallery in Chelsea and people were blown away. Shortly after she was given a 20 year retrospective at Saatchi and Saatchi gallery in New York where the films was screen and ran on monitors throughout the exhibition. I’d like to this seeing that film helped give people an entree into the life of a really special person and helped them engage more with her art. Film is a very powerful medium. It’s our life’s collective highlights and meaningful transitions all lined up in a concentrated format.

Authentic artists are brave and bold people. They have to be to investigate uncharted and unique creative territories. There is no existing model, there are no guidelines or blueprints for artists to follow. So they are constantly imagining and moving into that created world world. So in many ways artists create their own future and collectively ours. They are our vanguards who give us indications of what’s ahead for us. So they are generally good people to listen to and learn from. I don’t think every work of art generally needs to be articulated or explained by it’s creator, but I do think that we can all benefit by a conversation with the artist that provides a thread for us to discover the work by ourselves. I think artists like to feel that their expressions will be appreciated and understood but in my humble experience, I think it’s actually a very small percentage of art goers who genuinely connect with art. People oftentimes appreciate elements of a work of art, something familiar they relate to, but it is actually quite rare I think that people fully understand the artist’s intent. So providing a small thread via a voice or narrative on their work for the art fan to draw upon can be very helpful to them getting more out of their viewing experience. My experiment with making documentaries of artists around the world is another reason it’s good to establish dialogue. By talking with artists about their philosophy and worldviews, for example, I’ve learned that a lot of artists are really similar. One common thread that has revealed itself almost universally is that authentic artists work with what they have. They don’t wait around for some expensive material to do their thing. They understand that everything we need is around us and they grab it and go.

A major focus of “Films on Artists” is on the “Haiti Children’s Art Project”. How did you first get linked up with the “Life for the World” organization?

A friend called and asked if I would send a mass email to our gallery mailing list asking for donations to help rebuild an orphanage which had been destroyed in the earthquake. I didn’t like the idea of yet another almsgiving mission. That has been done so much and it’s not really very creative and I felt it might even do harm if people were to get numbed by the experience and tune out Haiti. In that moment I said what I would do is go there in a few weeks, bring canvasses and paints for the kids and have an exhibition of their work in our gallery. That way it would be a positive and motivating experience that would be a much more meaningful contribution. It would allow the kids to just have fun in this quite difficult transition in their lives. It would also give them self esteem in that their work would be transported to Chelsea and people would buy them so they were effectively earning their own money. We would merely be presenting them with a channel to make a difference in their own lives. The idea literally spoke itself in that moment so it was imperative that I follow it. Since then I’ve been to Haiti 5 times. The school has been built back up. I’ve grown to love the children at the Maranatha Orphanage. I just returned from a trip there yesterday where we were conducting a new art project, this time having them draw what fashion, clothes and style meant to them. These images will then be put out into the world of fashion design where designers can create clothing based on the images the kid’s painting. So now the children, not only have rebuilt their own school through their creative talents, but they are effectively collaborating with creative talent throughout the world, designers who will design clothes based on the their original thoughts and art. How exciting will it be to attend a fashion exhibit with the children’s work on display and then see clothes being modeled which was inspired by their creative expression?

The Internet and low-cost/high-quality media equipment has changed the face of the grassroots Nonprofit. What is the importance and function of film/digital media in an effort to raise awareness and contributions?

I think it’s awesome that high quality production has become so assessable for grassroots NFPs. As a filmmaker on this recent project painting with school children the major focus for me, over and above the actual creation of the painting with the children, was to document how amazing that experience was for the children and for us. The best way to capture that experience and impact are by being able to show an audience actual video footage of what went on. Still images are wonderful – I have worked as a photojournalist and love the medium – but there is nothing like hearing a child’s laughter and seeing their excitement at being allowed to paint what’s in their mind. That’s exceptionally connective. In my most recent trip we used a few Flip cameras as well as the very high resolution Canon 5D MK II. It’s great to have the breathtaking images the Canon is capable of recording, but those inexpensive Flips caught some really amazing moments. We have the tools to really connect people to situations around the world. I think the era of putting a sad child’s face on a leaflet in an effort to raise funds is pretty played at this point. Don’t forget also internet telephony as an extremely effectively tool to connect people. I am in the process now of establishing a program connecting a school in the USA via Skype to our orphanage in Haiti. How cool would it be for teachers to schedule a 15 minute group video session between relatively affluent American kids and kids from the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. There’s a lot each can learn from each other, but that visual connection can really change perspective and lives. To see in someone’s eyes how they are doing and feeling in a real sense, not abstractly through a letter. That’s powerful.

Your position seems to be that of a bridge between two seemingly dissimilar worlds; an upscale Manhattan culture (a world of Fine Art, fine wine and Fashion Shows), juxtaposed with the exploited and poverty stricken country of Haiti. As a liaison between these two worlds, what do you hope that one culture can learn from the other, and how does your film and art projects become a tool for achieving this?

I’ll answer that one in a roundabout way. I was traveling from Central America when the earthquake struck Haiti on Jan 12, 2010. I wrote this journal entry at Miami airport when I first saw reports of the earthquake on the airport monitors. We were in the midst of a world wide economic collapse and in that moment it was clear to me that Haiti’s experience was actually intricately connected with our own.

“I first learned of the earthquake in Haiti on a TV monitor while waiting for a transfer at Miami airport. I wasn’t that far from this strife-ridden Caribbean Island in that moment but the reportage to me felt like a video game, something catastrophic on the other side of the planet, like Darfur or Somalia – somewhere else, not here. The images of crumbled homes and dislodged, near-naked, dusty humans segued into a TV commercial for a fast food franchise almost seamlessly. The flight attendant announced that boarding was about to begin. We were back to our own flight plans and as quickly as Haiti had entered our consciousness, it was gone.

Haiti is not something removed from us, a situation that some world organization will take care of in the sweet bye and bye. Haiti is part of our world experience and our growth and our journey. It’s not a TV commercial – or a diversion on an airport monitor. Haiti isn’t an incumbrance. Haiti and its people are an opportunity for us all to experience and learn from a community working together towards renewal, rebuilding from the ground up. It’s as much about our change as Haiti’s.”

If we think it through, it’s pretty obvious that Haiti is an opportunity for us to examine our failings as a society. I think we lost track somewhat of the ethics of humble accomplishments, of community support, of being grateful or being conscious of our neighbors who may not be doing so well. We have a lot to learn from Haiti’s experience in this regard and we also have a lot of knowledge and expertise too we can share with Haiti.

The “Haiti Children’s Art Project” is not only a unique model designed for monetary relief, but also one which gives the child benefactors an opportunity to learn about, and express themselves. What are the lessons you hope they walk away with and carry on into their adulthood after this experience?

One of the most amazing parts of this project for me was, having laid out canvasses and a supply of paints and paintbrushes to over a 100 kids who had never seen a canvass or used a paint brush before, the kids just spontaneously combusted, pouring out such expressive images of their lives and their dreams for the future. In the short documentary I shot you can hear my friend Richard Laurent, who was working with the kids and translating what they were saying, asked why they made these paintings and several answered “because now I am an artist”. That was an amazing moment to see that pride and ownership. This project was really a conversation about life for them, an opportunity to see that their creativity had great value, that they could paint on canvass their dreams and goals and, having thought the thought, then that dream was on it’s way to becoming a reality.

Artist/Painter Richard Laurent

This week we completed another project with the kids where we had them draw images relating to fashion, style and clothing and what those things meant to them. We are sending out a .pdf of those images to fashion designers around the world so they can enter a competition with their designs inspired by the children’s images. The initial project of selling the children’s paintings in our gallery in Chelsea and building back up their school was a major step in their lives, for them to see people aggressively pursuing the purchase of their artwork. Now with this fashion project, they will effectively be collaborating with design talent around the world. These kids have pushed through from a quite insular and challenged situation to be forces in the world through their creativity. That’s pretty inspirational to me. If we can continue along this thread, I think in years from now we’ll look back on some of these artistic milestones in their lives and be able to see the difference we’ve made in their lives. The ultimate goal for me with this fashion project is that we would fabricate the best designs we receive and have a show during fashion week and start off a line of Fashion Clothing “Haiti Couture” and set up a manufacturing facility where these clothes would be made for sale around the world. How cool would it be create an industry where the children could find employment in an industry which they created in their own minds through their own artistic expression. That outcome will have a wonderful symmetry to it. Like closing a circle. They will have experienced the power of expressing a dream, putting in the world and seeing that dream become a reality.

Project Intern Rebecca Alvarez

There are many ways to reach out a helping hand and try to make a difference. The uniqueness of the work that you are doing is that your methods are centered around the transformative and healing power of the arts, as well as the ability for contributors to see how their efforts directly contribute to relief efforts. How can other artists and appreciators get involved?

What I am most delighted with in this small project is that we’re helping the kids see, in a very real sense, that they had the solution to their own situation in their own heads. All we’ve been doing is helping them along and building some bridges for them. But essentially many of the dreams they expressed in their artwork are coming to fruition. On the first trip we made, kids were running around in an assortment of relief aid t-shirts and largely barefoot. They had literally been sleeping out in the open, in rubble, in broken down buildings or in tents. On this recent trip there were three brand new class rooms, all the kids had matching uniforms. One teacher told me he had 7 students take their national exam for high school admission and all 7 passed with honors. Relating that improvement in their circumstances through documentary I think is a really powerful way of connecting contributors to the positive effects their donations are having. I really hope this project will inspire other artists to see the value of sharing their life force with others for good. Hopefully in the future we can start an exchange program where artists from the US can visit with and share their creative energy with the kids and collaborate with them. I’ve always been a big fan of the curative power of art, how it moves past surface dynamics and speaks more of and to our spirits.