Archives for category: Art
This is another page from my sketchbook for The Sketchbook Project in Brooklyn at The Brooklyn Art Library. I owe a lot to the school where I received my BFA degree. In fact I talk to a group of my former fellow students every week on Zoom. These women all went to Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, had the same teachers, went through the same grueling program.
Moore College of Art and Design was the same school Alice Neel attended. although in her time, the school was called Philadelphia School of Design for Women. When I went to Moore, there was a push to make it coed, but the board made a move to keep it a girls’ school, since the idea (new at the time) was that having men around as fellow students would make us less assertive and less competitive. A feminist idea.
After attending postgraduate classes at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the degree program classes at Atlanta College of Art (now Savannah College of Art and Design) where both schools were coed, I think as a society we were further along in our development and men were not a much of a deterrent. I don’t know if either of those two schools made me less assertive and less competitive. It seemed that in art schools, the teachers were always so “right” in their aesthetic that we as students were subservient anyway.
Back to Alice Neel, now showing in a major solo show in New York City at the Metropolitan Museum of Art went to the same art school as I did. She majored in Painting.
Hollis Hildebrand-Mills Copyright All Rights Reserved 2021-2025
Ceres Gallery is having their annual group show, “Raising Women’s Voices II,” June 25-July 20. I am exhibiting the piece above, made up of collage, oil and acrylic on canvas. There is charcoal in it as well. No internet images, just magazine tear outs. My piece, entitled “Coat Hangers,” measures 26″ x 36.”
The opening reception for the show is Thursday, June 27, 6-8PM.
Ceres Gallery
Suite 201
547 W 27 Street
New York, NY 10001
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 12:00-6:00PM, Thursday 12:00-8:00PM
212 947 6100
art@ceresgallery.org
I have been invited to participate in Art Papers 20th Annual Art Auction. The collage above is what I have donated. It is made up of magazine pieces, paint, pencil and pen on board. Framed in a 2 and 1/2 ” deep floater frame. The piece was started and completed last week. (2019) It measures 5″ x 5″ and is titled “It took So Long To Bake It”
You can make a bid for it online if you go to http:www.artpapers.org/events
The live auction is on March 2, 2019, 7:30 PM at 200 Peachtree St. N.W.
Atlanta, GA
I hope you can join the fun! It is a very special art magazine and I am participating with a lot of very talented artists!
My piece, “Soft voices” is in the show, “Raising Women’s Voices.” It is 5″ x 5″, magazine collage and paint on board, 2018. Copyright Hollis Hildebrand-Mills 2018 All Rights Reserved
“Raising Women’s Voices” is a group show of selected Ceres Gallery artists. Opening on May 22-June 16, 2018.
Ceres Gallery
547 West 27 Street, Suite 201
New York, NY 10001
http://www.ceresgallery.org
212.947.6100
Gallery hours: Tuesday-Saturday 12noon-6PM
Thursday 12noon-8PM
When I lived in Philadelphia, I lived in a five story walk-up. Red carpeted, very nice, cheap apartment. That last floor to my apartment was steep. Killer actually. I knew some wall writers. Some graffiti artists. They were very young, bad ass kids. I thought it would be a great idea if they painted my bathroom with their tags. I bought pizza and soda and some cans of silver, neon oranges, pinks and greens and gold spray paint. I think they brought their own markers. I taped the tile with newspapers so all they would be marking were the walls above the tile. Graffiti as an art form was not well known then.
In fact I found out recently, that Philadelphia started it all, with a kid who tagged with the name, “Cornbread.” He wanted his girlfriend at the time to remember him; He wrote “Cornbread” with a crown over the letters all along her bus route. It even shows up in the video of Bruce Springsteen singing the soundtrack for the movie, “Philadelphia.” Springsteen walks right by a “Cornbread” tag.
Enjoy this picture of Greg Davis. Also known as “T-Bone.” His writing as well as “Meanstreak’s” and “Eyeski’s” can still be seen from all the trains and buses in the Philadelphia area.
Oh, when I found these black and white photos, the “kids” went crazy with excitement. That night, I took the photographs with my single lens reflex 35 mm camera, which happened to have black and white film in it, 400 ASA.
It’s kind of like a happy ending to the story of Peter Pan. The kids are all grown up now. The work of Keith Haring, Basquiat and Cy Twombly has sold for millions. The wall-writing technique in their paintings are in museums and auction houses today. But these three young graffiti artists, although now far away from the artistic agility required to be an effective sneaky wall writer, still consider themselves Bad Asses.
In my room. Senior year at Moore College of Art and Design. Having my best friend and her husband over for dinner. The dinner I cooked in my room at twenty years of age. My best dinner was: canned green beans, noodles, ground beef and canned stewed tomatoes all mixed together. Fruit salad. Accompanied by a drink of homemade kaluah and ice cream, which was called a Polar Bear because of the color white the drink turned when I added ice-cream to the already vodka soaked liqueur. I was certain this dinner was a winner. Also my everyday ( even for special occasions ) outfit was Army Navy bells with an Army Navy turtleneck sweater. That was it. In my youth, what I didn’t know was vast. I wish I were that naive and at the same time, so certain of things as I was then.
As art students, we carried our cameras everywhere. But we only took B and W’s which we would develop and print later. If there was dust on the enlarger ( as is in this print ), we would hit it with the correct shade of spot tone. ( I had no patience with that. ) There are no photos of my best friend and her husband at this dinner. However she insisted that her late husband’s FAVORITE dinner was that canned green bean concoction.
Sadly, my best friend and I lost touch. I don’t make kaluah anymore. And I don’t do that electric fry pan green bean thing anymore either. I have grown more food-sophisticated, more clothing aware, but I have to say, nothing in the world can come close to the bursting enthusiasm of being twenty and the ever-expanding years of possibility and adventure ahead. The Army Navy sweater and pants combo, not bad either. That, I would wear today.
“Dressed Right for a Beach Fight,” 2015, 39” x 29” (framed with a mat), charcoal and pencil on paper. The drawing will be in a group show at Ceres Gallery, 547 W. 27th Street, Suite 201, New York, NY 10001, June 20th-July 15th. The reception is June 22nd, 6-8 PM. The name of the group exhibition is “My Favorite Things.”
Originally, I did this drawing for a solo show. My work for the solo show was related to clothes and how much I crave them, remembering events in my life by what I was wearing at the time. Since, I have decided not to do an exhibition based on clothing.
Therefore when the Ceres group show came up, I wanted this drawing to be in the show because I still catalogue my memories in this way and it goes very well with the theme. The title of the drawing is strange, but if it confuses you or seems to evoke questions or need explanation, just think of it as “Drawing Number One.”
This is the finished “mixed media” painting-number 10 of my series of crosses. When I showed the series in New York last year, “The Cross Series”, I only showed nine. Actually nine was the perfect number for the gallery. I did this one this year. I think this painting reflects the political climate of the time. It is definitely more frenetic and complicated. It took longer to resolve.
There is a lot of work for me to do. I am planning on doing four smaller paintings, each assigned to a different venue. The deadline for these is in about six weeks. Sometimes, my best work is work done very quickly. Less overworked, less second guessed, more spontaneous. Hope I don’t have the same struggles with these as I did with the above work.
The good news, is, the freeway in Atlanta is fixed! Or will be by next Monday, therefore I will be going back into town more often to work. No more clogged surface roads, clogged sinuses due to bad ventilation in the basement. Everyone was using the backroads causing sinkholes. More blocked traffic. The world, at least locally will return to the way things were.
Above is what is called “a Work In Progress.” I thought it was far enough along to show. (What you can see of it, anyway.)
My daughter took this photograph while she was doing a video of me working on the painting. The camera went off and bam, not prepared, I have this to post.
It is the tenth Cross Painting, adding to the nine painting series shown in New York about a year ago. I thought I would even the series out to ten, as I am currently applying to a variety of venues for which I’ll keep the series in tact.
As you might know, a few weeks ago, Atlanta had a fire underneath a major intersection of freeway. The fire burned through the steel support beams melting the pavement, destroying the highway, preventing any traffic to cross over. The estimated amount of vehicles passing daily through this particular span of freeway is 450,000. Also worth noting, is the fact that this span of road is necessary for most commuters to get to and from work everyday. And this has caused commuter time to triple due to everyone taking surface streets to circumvent the accident site.
Virtually, Atlanta is crippled.
Therefore, for now, I am working at home. Not that I stay exclusively out here. I do brave the ungodly slowed-down traffic to do some work in my “real” studio at least once or twice a week. But, in this little home studio in the basement, it’s fine for the majority of work that needs getting done immediately. There is a minimum of clutter around. Just my tackle box full of paints, some favorite artist reference books I consider important to this project, an extra glass pallet and brushes, all of which I toted from my studio on the other side of the forbidden stretch of road.
I enjoy working at home, but I do believe I am better off if I physically separate work from home. Painting is such an immersive thing, both mentally and physically. I get Turpenoid all over my hands so that they tingle at night, even after washing them a million times. And I feel so dirty. Of course I work longer hours, being at home. But the time spent working, could be the time spent decompressing, as my drive home does for me. A nice ride to make my brain come to attention and get the darn Neil Young songs out of my head.
Let’s hope the road is fixed soon. And I can enjoy my spacious studio time on a steady basis again. But for now, I am lucky to have such a small, perfect space at home where I can keep moving on my work. Get it? Keep Moving?
Hollis Hildebrand-Mills 