John Hawk a native of Seattle, Washington received his MFA from CalArts in Art and Film/Video in 1991. His work has been screened and exhibited at numerous museums, galleries and film festivals, including the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, the Seattle Art Museum, 911 Media Arts in Seattle, EZTV in Los Angeles as well as PBS and CNN television.
He was a grand prize winner with his video, The Anabaptists in the 1994 Seattle Video Shorts Festival and received the Silver Award for his video, Signal to Noise in the 1997 New York EXPO of Short Film and Video. Signal to Noise was subsequently screened at the Knitting Factory in Manhattan, EXPO 98, the Worlds Fair in Lisbon, Portugal, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Dokumentarfilm und Videofest in Kassel, Germany, the Aurora Picture Show in Houston, Texas and Transmediale 2000 in Berlin.
His film Nadaland won a Juror’s Award at the 2006 Berkeley Art Center International Small Film Festival while his video, Parts Per Million was screened at the 2006 Not Still Art International Electronic Media Festival in Brooklyn, New York. He was the cinematographer and co-editor of Clara’s Los Angeles, a film by Marissa Chibas, which was screened at Highways in Santa Monica, the San Diego Latino Film Festival and at the REDCAT theater in Los Angeles as part of the Now Festival 2011.
Collaborating with biologist Michael Bryant their film Menopause in Guppies was screened at the Berlin Directors Lounge Festival 2013. The Echo Park Film Center presented a retrospective of his film and installation work in the Fall of 2014. His video graphics piece Analog Orange was screened at the 2016 Punto y Raya Festival in Karlsruhe, Germany.
He is also a critically acclaimed guitarist, recording engineer and record producer and previous to his return to art and film was an internationally recognized guitar builder with a Seymour Duncan bass and guitar pickup named in his honor “The Hawkbucker”.
