IN MODESTO JENNY HUNTER GROAT ATTENDED THE FIRST GRADE IN A ONE-ROOM SCHOOLHOUSE, with grades 1-6 all together. She was 5 years old When her mother remarried and the family moved to Redding, California, where Groat finished high school. After graduation she worked for a year in a bookkeeping office to earn enough money to attend school at San Joaquin Delta College and the Conservatory of the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, majoring in Piano. AT THAT TIME SHE BECAME AWARE OF MODERN DANCE. Teacher, MARJORIE B SHERIDAN, had been a pupil of the famous German Expressionist dance/artist, MARY WIGMAN, and had been in her Dance Company. Marjorie taught Wigman's skills, heavily weighted toward improvation, solo and in groups. There was also a special kind of movement and way of using space. Groat found this totally absorbing. With Marjorie, she began to compose her own dances. Groat says, "If she had been teaching only 'technique' classes I would not have been interested, but she believed in teaching to develop the creativity in each person." Marjorie also started Groat out out in teaching children in creative dance. There she began to make the connection between formal composition as she was being taught it in music, and its possibilities as a dance form. She made at least one dance using musical forms, since both of these are "arts of time." AFTER THREE YEARS GROAT (AS HUNT) RECEIVED HER ASSOCIATE IN ARTS DEGREE Degree from San Joaquin Delta College. But she realized that although she was doing well in the Music Department, she was not a "musician's musician," In her head she was "dancing" everything she played. She literally "ran away overnight" and moved to San Francisco to study as JENNY HUNTER (her dance name, chosen to avoid confusion with other San Francisco dancers)at the Halprin-Lathrop Studio, then the best on the west coast. She was seeking a way not only to gain the necessary physical training of a professional dancer, but just as importantly, deeply needed a way to continue working with the skills of improvisation which she had begun.IN THIS WAY HER "FORMAL EDUCATION" CONTINUED,and she studied for many more years much in the same way that Renaissance artists once trained, by moving from one artist's atelier to another, to study specific things leading to desired mastery in the chosen artform. In each of her fields she took great care to acquire a solid grounding, and only then did she "set it free," as she says, "which isnecessary eventually if one is to achieve innovation in any field. But THERE MUST BE SOMETHING WORTH FREEING."If taken all together, her studies would be seen to be the equivalent of graduate study, and this, too, is what the artist's of the 40's and 50's lived. Groat says, "We needed no single certificate that says I am qualified to make my art. No one used to need it. Still, I do believe that those who would be artists must have training."THE HALPRIN-LATHROP STUDIO and SCHOOL, and its performing company were led by Welland Lathrop and Ann Halprin. Welland had been a student of Martha Graham's, and had danced in her Company. With him Groat again studied formal composition, in the manner of Louis Horst, who had give Martha Graham the methods of using "pre-classical" form in composing her dances. Groat was doing again, in movement, what she had done before, in musical composition. The Studio was a very rich source, with many kinds of classes and many world famous guest teachers. Groat had classes in Basic Design, Costuming, Lighting, Color Theory, Teacher Training, and many other things.Anna Halprin had studied the technique of Doris Humphrey, and the educational theories of Margaret d'Houbler, at the University of Wisconsin. Groat says that with Anna "I was able to continue improvisation and what I call an "organic" kind of composition, that came from the inner life of the work itself rather from any previously imagined form." Anna also taught Teacher Training, using the d'Houbler influences, and Groat benefitted from all of the activity of this school. In a few years she was dancing leading roles in the Company and teaching in the School.IN 1994 SHE TRAVELED TO REED COLLEGE IN PORTLAND, OREGON, to develop and teach the first of three Summer Dance Courses there, teaching children and adults (1954-55-56). That summer she met MAURICE F. "PETE" GROAT, and they were married in San Francisco in January, 1955. Pete later worked for 28 years in the Planning Department for the City and County of San Francisco.At Reed College Jenny Hunter had a pivitol meeting of minds with Professor LLOYD J. REYNOLDS, and in any time she could spare from teaching in the summer of 1956, joined a small group of Lloyd's for her first classes in Calligraphy. At that time she converted her handwriting to Chancery Cursive. She says, "I didn't know it then, but LLOYD HAD CHANGED MY LIFE AGAIN." BACK HOME IN SAN FRANCISCO, JENNY HUNTER GROAT broke away from Halprin-Lathrop in 1957 to form THE JENNY HUNTER DANCE COMPANY. For them she composed and performed in solos and group works with adult dancers from her other classes. She continued to teach dance in communities around the Bay Area and helped her husband finish his Master's Degree in Planning. She fulfilled various commissions, notably for Stanford University (the west coast premiere of Menotti's, "The Unicorn, The Gorgon and The Manticore") and others. AFTER THREE TRIPS TO NEW YORK TO STUDY WITH MERCE CUNNINGHAM, Groat founded her own school, "THE JENNY HUNTER STUDIO; DANCE WEST," on Clement Street in San Francisco. From 1961 till 1968 her performing group and school were based there. she taught not only explorative dance technique (increasingly her own), but improvisation, teacher training, costume design, kinesiology, composition, and other related dance art subjects. Her creative dance classes for children were widely appreciated and she was often asked to lecture and give demonstrations and master classes classes for groups of all kinds, from nursery schools to universities. In those years she continued to choreograph and perform what were often dubbed, "pioneer" and "avant-garde" dance works for herself and her Company and became nationally known and respected in this field. In the last few of those years she made several, multi-media performance/art pieces that were full-evening length, without intermission. These may have been the first of their kind. One, named "THE EFFORT," was in the round, and multi-media, with improvised "tasks," and was performed at Bill Grahams' old Fillmore Auditorium. The other of these works, "Birthdays," was filmed in 1967 by John Coney, then a director for KQED TV to initiate their first, new color equipment. This film later toured the US and Europe for two years. But at that time there were as yet few, if any, grants available for modern dance or performance art groups. In 1968 the pressures of working with limited resources in the field forced her to retire from dance. JENNY HUNTER GROAT with her husband, Pete, moved to Mill Valley, in Marin County, north of San Francisco,where for five years she observed a seminal PERIOD OF RETREAT, renewing her acquaintance with Nature, Zen Buddhism, and the psychology of C.G. Jung, under the guidance of a master teacher, DR DONALD F. SANDNER.IN 1974 SHE BEGAN TO TEACH ITALIC HANDWRITING to 2 or 3 friends, in her living room. Then gradually, from 1974 to about 1997,she studied western calligraphy, and by 1983 she had again achieved international recognition as a master artist and teacher. As she sought to make fully contemporary statements from the merging of hand-written words with images rendered in various media, her artworks crossed all barriers, winning placement in both fine crafts and art exhibitions for their discipline, freedom and innovation. Until 1989 she accepted invitations to travel throughout the US and southern Canada, presenting calligraphic/art workshops that specialized in creativity, gesture and design. Today her work continues to appear in many books and publications internationally, and she says, "The study of calligraphy contributes greatly to the sense of line and gesture that is now as important as improvisation in my paintings." Groat was invited to teach at 5 of the International Calligraphy Symposiums. IN 1992 ONE OF HER ARTIST'S BOOKS, "A Vision," WAS PURCHASED BY THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS, in Washington, DC.,where it is exhibited frequently.Another work, a collaboration work for which she did the inside design work and calligraphy, was the 82-page Manuscript book, "Beauty and the Beast," with the initiator and bookbinder, Lage Carlson, and others. This book resides at the HumanitiesResource Center of the University of Texas, in Austin.But she was still seaching for an artform that could speak to more levels of being. She says, "I began to be aware that although I could support calligraphic texts with various background media, as soon as I put even one WORD into a work, the viewer would READ, and non-verbal meanings were secondary. I knew I needed to return to the non-verbal arts in which I had begun, music and dance, and to make again statements that are beyond words. I want now to explore new subtleties and evoke new sensitivities, as I did before." IN 1997 MS.GROAT RETIRED FROM ALL CALLIGRAPHIC TEACHING and returned to her earliest interest in painting. Her work has now been seen on 6 continents. Working in oil and acrylic on canvas, and in watercolor, ink, collage and other media on paper, her art is now a synthesis of her experiences in music, dance, calligraphy and poetry, infused with her lived connection with sources similar to those that produced much of the West Coast Abstract-Expressionist art. Improvisational skills, begun in college and the dance years, were enriched by Jungian depth-psychology and Zen practice. All of these have reinforced her already strong sense of the interconnectedness of all nature and of the arts, through a life-long training in sensory perception. These elements, with her stong understanding of color and acknowledged mastery of the brush and gesture, have brought to her work the enormous energy and inner spirit often mentioned by reviewers. Already winning many awards, Groat works by 1997 were selected to two different exhibitions at the Grand Palais in Paris France.There have been many group painting exhibitions,and the many one person showings have included those at the Claudia Chapline Gallery, Stinson Beach, CA; Gallery One, Petaluma, CA; . The Performing Arts Library and Museum of San Francisco has taken an ORAL HISTORY of Groat's life, as part of their "Legacy" project.WITH THE "ART OF INK IN AMERIA" group, Groat participates in showing abstract calligraphic works in ink with artists from all over the world, including the founders, who are of Asian heritage. The founder, DR. SUN WUK KIM, has made this group one in which "East Meets West," in that each calligrapher has the choice of making works that are either in Asian or Western characters, or the choice to abandon the native characters in favor of totally abstract writing in ink. With this group Groat has exhibited work in Seuol, South Korea; Rutgers University in the US; New York City, Italy, and other venues. Her works are abstract and purely composed gestural paintings.Of her artworks that seem to display an oriental influence, Ms. Groat remarks, "I've never really studied oriental calligraphy. My brush-calligraphy has been from David Howells, of England, and Friedrich Neugebauer and Karlgeorg Hoefer, both of Germany. We were working with western letterforms, and more or less inventing new forms for the pointed brush. One could say that my Asian-influenced works come from 'common ancestors' in development. The use of the pointed brush, the influence of Zen of meditation, watching the breath, the immediacy of the 'now' moment in the frame of mind, and the continuance of the improvisational spontaneity have all flowed together and combined with the fact that I grew to artistic maturity in the Ab/Ex world of the 50's and in San Francisco, 'The Gateway to the Orient.' It would have been odd had I not shown these influences."WHILE PAINTING IS NOW HER PRIME FOCUS, she continues to sketch, for the practice of its constant challenge to observation, and loves to pore over her large collection of art books. Though hiking and camping are no longer possible, Ms. Groat works in her garden in the rural environment where she lives with Pete. They have now been married for 56 years. , … Read More