Sharon Lockhart
Sharon Lockhart is an artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. She is currently working on a new film and photographic series addressing the experience of American childhood.
Sharon Lockhart is an artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. She is currently working on a new film and photographic series addressing the experience of American childhood.
What images keep you company in the space where you work?
Many come and go, but for the last couple years I have had a film still of Addie Pray (played by Tatum O’Neal in the film Paper Moon, 1973) in my studio. I think I originally picked it up because I thought Tatum O’Neal was such an interesting figure; she was not an actor but learnt to act on the set and starred with her real-life father. I think her resoluteness in this image also interested me. She stands there with all her belongings, which don’t amount to much. Although the still is in colour, the film is exquisitely shot in black and white.
What was the first piece of art that really mattered to you?
This is a real stumper for me because I have the worst memory. I don’t think I went to a museum until I was in my twenties. My mother had lots of little pictures around the house that were watered-down commercial versions of 17th- and 18th-century paintings. These are the images that I always go back to in my head.
If you could live with only one piece of art, what would it be?
Portrait of a Young Woman (1667–8), by Vermeer. I go to see it at the Met whenever I’m in New York.
What film has most influenced you?
First major influence: A Woman under the Influence (1974), by John Cassavetes: it really changed the way I thought about film, acting and directing. It was both really modest and really immediate.
What is your favourite title of an artwork?
Stephen Prina’s ‘It Was the Best He Could Do at the Moment’ (1992) – actually a survey exhibition title. It always seems so effortless with Prina! My runner-up would be Total Babe (Bad Picture), a Frances Stark title that’s stuck with me since 1991. It’s actually not so different from Prina’s.
What do you wish you knew?
How to play pedal steel guitar.
What should change?
Politics aside, the pace of life.
What could you imagine doing, if you didn’t do what you do?
Maybe writing biographies. The research would interest me very much – not so much sifting through books, but meeting people, conducting interviews, listening to stories. It’s a bit like anthropology.
What music are you listening to?
Johnny Cash, Django Reinhardt, Willie Nelson, Elvis Costello’s Almost Blue (1981), Bob Dylan and the mountain songs from the Smithsonian Folkways recordings. There is a really wonderful ballad on there about a girl named Omie Wise. I’ve also been listening to Balam Garcia, a 12-year-old I am making an album with.
What are you reading?
Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith (2003), by Andrew Wilson, and We Took to the Woods (1975), by Louise Dickinson Rich.
What do you like the look of?
The Maine woods when it is overcast.
What is art for?
To make you think and see differently.
How long did it take for you to respond to this questionnaire?
Twenty minutes and ten days. I filled out most of it immediately and then got obsessed with the question about what I would do if I didn’t do what I do. I asked all my friends and family the same questions and dragged it out. I really liked posing these questions to everyone.
