GREENPOINT — The spirit world will go wild for this one.
Local artist Michael Hambouz's latest art show at the Greenpoint gallery Calico features work from eight artists who were inspired by their sessions with psychic and medium Hank Hivnor, who's known for acting as a spiritual guide for artists and the fashion elite.
Hambouz got the idea for the show after his own session with Hivnor, he said.
He'd never met with a psychic before, but afterward Hambouz felt like "things rattled around in my head a little bit, knocked loose," he said. Following the session, the artist revisited old ideas and felt inspired to create.
"I had this really, really, crazy profound experience meeting with the guy," Hambouz explained.
Work inspired by sessions with the psychic will go on display starting February 20 at Calico, located at 67 West St., in the show titled "Mediums."
Each artist worked in different media, including painting, sculpture and photography.
Painter Chrissy Angliker said her work, "Sand and Water," was unconsciously inspired by an insight Hivnor had about her love life.
Angliker wasn't sure what to create after her session but felt drawn to paint an old photograph of her family at the beach, she said. After intense, nonstop painting, she realized that Hivnor had used the phrase "sand and water" during her session, Angliker said.
Hivnor told Angliker that she viewed her romantic relationships as a Mondrian painting, but once something changed in her romantic life, things would appear more like "sand and water," the artist said.
"I got goosebumps," Angliker said of realizing where the work originated from.
However, husband-and-wife photography duo Ebru Yildiz and Mitchell King were inspired differently during their session, Yildiz said.
Yildiz went into it with more of an open mind, while King was more skeptical of Hivnor's psychic ability.
They decided to present work that showed how Hivnor saw the world — in layers, Yildiz said.
"He's this very perceptive person," Yildiz explained. "Even if he's not talking to other people, or dead people, or spirits, it is this genuinely nice person who is talking about the vibes he's getting off of you."
Hivnor found it "really, really profound" to help the artists with their creative process during the hour-long sessions.
"I kind of felt like I was an astronaut going into these foreign dimensions that are really inner dimensions of the artists," he said.
Hambouz didn't expect everybody to walk away from the experiece feeling floored, or even to believe in Hivnor's professed gift.
And if any of the artists left "thinking it's complete bulls--t," that would be OK too, the artist said.
"Sometimes experiencing something weird and crazy, that can be the conduit for creating something new," Hambouz said. "That’s really cool to me."
Mediums will be shown at Calico, 67 West St., suite 203, from February 20 to March 27 on Fridays and Saturdays between 12 p.m. and 5 p.m. The opening reception on February 20, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., is free and open to the public.
