We recently connected with Sophie Hansuh Im and have shared our conversation below.
Sophie Hansuh, appreciate you joining us today. Can you walk us through some of the key steps that allowed you move beyond an idea and actually launch?
Life has an interesting way of opening up doors of opportunities. I’d describe that my life was full of one thing leading to another and that still stands truthful in my journey as a designer and a creative. I come from a background where I followed my father to a variety of cultures, mindsets, scenery and sources of imagination. I eventually realized there was a special path paved just for me. Back then when I was simply breathing and less aware, it was hard to understand the grand scheme of my creative crossing to different areas, but because I had an entirely unique journey that I entered with unconsciousness, now I can notice the difference and diversity I can bring to the table with full intentionality. My actual start is evidently from my birth and the knowledge, ideas, power of conceptualization I accumulated since then, but to exercise brevity for the opening of my story, I jump to the part where I started as a naive teenager in Ghana who started college, then figured out I need to do more, changed courses by coming to Savannah, GA and eventually who landed in Atlanta at the moment. My ideas come from the history I made with my experiences and passion. It also comes from the humanity I encountered and engaged with throughout my life discovery which I still make everyday. Launching those ideas takes courage, blind faith, confidence and support. I will keep it a little general for now. I’ll find moments to expound on what I mean here within this interview.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am a designer and a creative who indulges herself in theatre, filmmaking, and event design. The phrase hungry artist is not wrong. It is hard to only keep one occupation and make a living, so my solution to that was to find different channels of creativity and see what I am good at and learn if I like it. It turned out extremely beneficial to me.
My specialty lies on scenic design, props fabrication and floral design. I’m a mixture of many works and I believe there’s always room to develop these assets into something new. Scenic design has always been something I’ve been passionate about and something I found I had talent in. I enjoy looking at what can be understood as irrelevant, but later reveals itself as the missing piece I’ve been searching for. I pay attention to why space feels a certain way, and how that mood was achieved. I study what objects and information can establish different emotions and experiences. I intently listen to different people’s ideas and their life, but also how they deliver their stories-there’s quite a lot you can learn by talking to people, but also from how they talk. All of the qualities that I just explained make me a set designer. A set designer needs to pay attention to details, so she can re-create a certain place that will convey the right message spatially in a narrative form. She needs to have passion in learning what items can disseminate what feelings and imply what history the space possesses and will repeat and change. She also needs to stay collaborative and work with different minds of people. Collaboration is a strong tool, that oftentimes will be challenging, but always holds so much force to create something that a single individual would not even consider creating.
I found my collaborative creative journey in theatre, film and event design. All the work I do is about using my own experience and expertise to gift my audience a new experience. Life is actually all pretty much about what experiences we collect intentionally and accidentally, that will later contribute to a different course of life and choices we make. In a nutshell, I specialize in gifting experiences.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
My primary goal in working in the entertainment industry is to touch the hearts of the audience who look at the work I create with many other creative minds. I take it seriously when it comes to the mission of using the medium of visual storytelling as a means to convey a message with convenience and accessibility. I also find it my responsibility to be an expert in the concept of the narrative. Becoming an expert requires research and passion to find something totally unexpected that could sometimes change the stream of creative direction.
As part of my mission, I always mention how it is equally important to take a good look at the background and be cognizant of what and how the people work who are often obscured by the flashy visuals of the result when the work is complete. When we come across a film or theatre production as an audience member, what we are presented with is only the tail end of hard and powerful collaboration. I admit as an audience member, it is hard to picture the full scope of how this piece of work could’ve been made. I don’t think everyone is obligated to know what goes into creating their source of entertainment, enlightenment and many other things visual storytelling is, but I still hope there can be some light shed on to the creative process. My goal is also to create a sense of community that the people who work behind the scenes will feel valued and cherished to be proud of what they are capable of. I want to share what minds and efforts are involved in creating something that yields the power to move and inspire people, so that we creatives feel encouraged to pursue further, be hungry to create and feel grateful for the pioneering collaboration. This goal is accompanied with the desire to learn more about the world I live in and the people I live among.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
There is so much focus on being the best in whatever you do. I was also trained under the impression that I need to excel highly over others that will make myself stand out from the crowd. I needed to unlearn this in the sense that I don’t need to manufacture myself into some kind of being that is better than all others, and I had to learn the truth that being the best can happen simultaneously amidst the presence of other bests. It is hard to unearth that we are actually gifted in something that either we have yet to discover, or just discovered that is prone to being crushed. Found calling can be doubted about and demolished easily, because we get caught up in the idea that we need to compare ourselves with others and find something that we are better than them. There’s no need for a separation between I and them. We are all part of the community to learn about ourselves and understand what different beautiful talents live among us. What is important here is, being best doesn’t connote others shouldn’t reach the level of your skillfulness, but that they are simply gifted and are best in different ways. The notorious imposter syndrome doesn’t need to exist, and as long as we finally have the moment of awakening that we were called to do work ‘with’ the people and not constantly ‘against’ them in the crazy pursuit of trying to be ‘better’ than them. Once we find this out, I believe that will bring so much positive challenge and desire to encounter much more of what each of us were meant to pursue and cultivate. I unlearned how to move ahead and look around because I want to be the best. I learned how to move ahead and look around because I want to know what other bests are out in the world and how I can cofunction.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sophieim.wixsite.com/setdsgn
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sophie.im_art/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophie-im-hs/
Image Credits
Trina Bacon Casey Gardner Ford