“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.
Google captures some of my earlier stuff (Google captures everyone’s earlier stuff) where I went a little crazy with natural disasters. I even had a solo show in Atlanta where, although I did not mention natural disasters in the title of the exhibition, the entire body of work consisted of volcanoes and floods.
I exhibited in a solo show in New York with this kind of work also, but I did own up to the subject matter this time by using the title, “Tectonics”. In both of these shows and in all the work I do with this theme, I approach it from an aesthetic point of view. I love explosions, tidal waves, fire and brimstone. I like the chaos, color, motion and excitement. The nature of natural disasters encapsulates these things.
The above work is one of the collages from the “Afloat: An Installation” series, using this theme. Flames and explosions amid a lovely valley near a snow-covered mountain. I searched extensively to find magazines with fire, explosions and smoke on the printed page. (I do not use photoshop or internet images ever. All of my collage work is cut paper from magazines and other printed material) I like cut printed material for this type of art because even magazines are now on the internet. I am combining what-is-becoming old fashioned materials with an old fashioned medium.
What is not hard to find, however, in magazines, are flowers. And I love how I put the foreground flames side-by-side with over-sized flowers. As if to say, hey, all is okay.
Hollis Hildebrand-Mills 
The way you utilize existing images and re-configure them to fit the context of your work is really very attractive. This piece is vivid and visually there is so much going on but not in a way that detracts from the central theme of the work. Nature is a powerful force one we either respect safely from a distance or when it engulfs us leaving us helpless. My thoughts, as I am sure are yours and many others, are with the victims & survivors of the recent typhoon in the Philippines. How something so beautiful can level such ugly destruction is sometimes hard to accept and make sense of.
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I agree. But I don’t look at the tragedy. I guess that’s what working in
Advertising did for me. Ha! I take the visual out of it. Or, rather, put it in it.
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Very interesting. So the balance of the two doesn’t negatively affect your overall appreciation of nature’s intrinsic beauty?
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No because you have to look at it only with the right side of your brain. Sure they are trees, or ocean, but that’s only because you are not looking at them as trees or ocean. I look at them as structure in which to put movement and color and motion in. And a little humor.
But I used to do lilies for lilies sake and trees for trees sake, but I painted the spaces between the trees. so it was abstract.
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Ok, that makes a lot of sense. I see what you are saying.
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🙂
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