Point of Origin

Multi-Disciplinarian artist Sarah Sudhoff collaborates with Houston based modern dancers Alisa Mittin and Stacy Skolnik to activate her gallery exhibition, “Point of Origin,” utilizing movement in confined space and weight sharing to represent the shared responsibilities and interactions of Houston’s Life Flight air medical crews. This experimental exhibition takes cues from the connections between sound and human emotion. 

Growing up on or near military bases with her father, a military pilot, the sounds of aviation have long been the soundtrack of Sudhoff’s life. The sounds that would carry her father away for long deployments would resurface on his return. The sound of military planes and helicopters trigger nostalgia, hope and fear.

In San Antonio, the artist lived under the direct paths of military training routes and the air ambulance system, and in Houston she again finds herself looking skyward, following the red helicopters of Memorial Hermann’s Life Flight. Her sparked memories and growing curiosity led her to Memorial Hermann to begin a conversation about a collaboration. With data from their five bases in the Houston area, she began her evolving Point of Origin project, seeking to honor those involved in these life-saving missions.

The exhibition includes suspended sculptures, sound installation, and debossed wall works that draw upon personal observations, cartography, and the mechanics of the helicopter and those involved in the nearly 300 flights completed in just one month of Life Flight.

As an extension of her “Point of Origin” exhibition at grayDUCK Gallery, artist Sarah Sudhoff has collaborated with Houston based dancers Alisa Mittin and Stacy Skolik to interpret data collected (flight logs and patterns) from Memorial Hermann’s Life Flight air ambulance system. 

The dancers will create a heightened sense of activity in a confined space around and within the audience. Through the use of weight sharing and minimal props, the interactions between bodies and the shared responsibilities aboard each Life Flight mission will be reflected in the dancers’ movements.

FROM GRAYDUCK: Multi-Disciplinarian artist Sarah Sudhoff collaborates with Houston based modern dancers Alisa Mittin and Stacy Skolnik to activate her gallery exhibition, “Point of Origin,” utilizing movement in confined space and weight sharing to represent the shared responsibilities and interactions of Houston’s Life Flight air medical crews.

Point of Origin – In an exhibition of suspended sculpture, sound installation, and debossed wall works, multi-disciplinarian artist Sarah Sudhoff explores her emotional connection to the sound of Houston’s Life Flight rotor-wing ambulance service.

—-Jill Schroeder, grayDUCK Gallery