Julie Granata-Hunicutt

2024 Leadership Board | Founding TWC Member

Where do you claim as home?

I consider myself a “Midwesterner” (though I haven’t lived there in a long time), and attempt to create home wherever I find myself. But in my heart - I claim Chicago.

What Makers and Artists inspire you and inform your aesthetic?

The collaborators in front of me, and the thing we are Making together. Also (in no particular order, at different stages in my journey), Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, John Cage, Ani DiFranco, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Chet Baker, Connee Boswell, Nina Simone, Alexandra Billings, Ann Bogart, Betsy Hamilton, Patty Pierce, Tanita Fadyeyola, Cortia Kent, Frank Lloyd Wright, Peter Brook, Gob Squad, DV 8, Akram Khan, SITI co., Tadashi Suzuki…to name just a few.

What is your perfect restful day?

Husband + dog + mountain air + hammock + good book.

What’s one quality you value in collaborators and what’s one you bring to every collaboration?

I value active curiosity in my collaborators, and I bring the ability to make meaningful connections between people, ideas and creative content.

If you could only listen to one piece of music for the rest of your life, what would it be?

John Coltrane’s In a Sentimental Mood (https://youtu.be/r594pxUjcz4)

Something underrated?

Knowing when it is appropriate to apply the concept of Satisficing to your life/work.

Multiverse Theory? Exists or not?

I 100% believe that the Multiverse Theory is a useful, fascinating and imaginative goldmine of human ideas. It does what we are so very good at as humans: explaining things we don’t understand. We use story to fill in the gaps until science / technology comes along to shine its glorious light of reason and facts upon our consciousness. So like many humans who love a good story, I say “Yes!” - to the idea of the Multiverse. I marvel at physicists who can weave a huge tapestry of concepts to creatively engage in the idea of what’s possible. And just like the deeply effective religious stories of my youth, it would be awesome if it were all true. But until the same quality and quantity of data that supports the existence of other things we can’t see/sense - like atoms, bacteria and viruses - supports the existence of a Multiverse, I’m not sold.

However fabulous it would be to believe there is another me out there - one who can work magic, fly, or behave like a human before her morning coffee - I think I have to commit to the incredible Universe of stories I’m already in, and the bizarre character I play in those stories.