Michael, 72 x 48 inches, oil, acrylic and collage on canvas, 2025.
The above painting is going to be shown at my solo show in Chelsea, NYC at Ceres Gallery:
“Lilies and Angels” Ceres Gallery 547 W 27th New York, NY 10001 March 4-29, 2025, Gallery Hours 12-6 PM– Tuesday through Saturday, 12-8PM– on Thursday. Reception for the artist: Thursday March 6, 2025 6-8PM.
I first was introduced to Pat Sharp by a mutual friend of ours, a neighbor of hers when Pat lived on Lombard Street in Philadelphia. We met in a crowded seventies singles bar. Pat was hoping to hire someone to work with her, painting murals for interior decorators. I showed her my portfolio. I was hired.
The Pat I met on that rainy spring night was the Pat I would know for many decades. A personality bigger than life. As if what was inside of her couldn’t be contained by just her body. Her energy field extended way far beyond. As most people are, she was a mix. Pat was a mix of the ethereal, ( her extensive knowledge of astrology ) and the practical. Not loud or bossy or even demanding. She was a great deal older than I was, but she acted young and effervescent and she laughed a lot. Sure, I would like to paint murals with her. I was not working at that singles bar anymore and I had a feeling it would be fun to work with Pat.
Pat painted the walls with either a large or small crew in peoples’ homes. An example of a small crew was me alone being asphyxiated in an oil painted plaid closet. The decorator had sold the job to someone with bad taste, as was often the case. We would go into these expensive townhomes or penthouses, Pat swinging a paint can, later, sloshing a coffee cup, later still, a beer can. (“Don’t worry,” she would say, “There’s a drop cloth underneath me!”) Her car was a giant ashtray filled with spilled dried paint, paint cans and root beer barrels with root beer barrel wrappers. It was missing the muffler. Also consider the equipment she had to lug around: ladders, 5 gallon paint cans, drop cloths, etc. And I have to say, the car was a maroon small sedan with black interior which of course, you couldn’t see. We, the crew, would crowd in and she would drive us to the job, where she worked alongside us. My being alone in the plaid closet was an exception.
A large crew example, was a job which required scaffolding and six of us painting the kelly green living/dining room walls with white bamboo designs from baseboard to crown molding. This was a client who fixed us, the crew, breakfast, lunch and dinner on white tablecloth covered tables, in her dining/living room. My brother, Rusty even worked for Pat, not that he lived in the area, but during a summer break from college, he came to visit me and Pat put him to work on the bamboo job. Rusty, being a terrific dancer, taught us all how to dance on the scaffolding. Philadelphia was the center for old school soul music. An ordinary AM station had great dance tunes. Back and forth on the highest of levels, Pat and her crew learned how to dance, paintbrushes in hand.
All her life, Pat was a painter. A true artist, understood by others or not, she remained true to herself. She was giggly, fun, a gourmet cook. She had even been called a walking talking party. When she was visiting the food pantry because she had no money for food, she would make these gourmet meals, eating and enjoying them by herself. Actually she made meals which transcended gourmet. A foodie before Pat knew the word.
That was the Pat I knew. I knew her as this incredible, validating, vivacious artist who made up her own rules and charged through life with immense energy. Later on, many years later, she was living in a coastal town in Maine, ( which, she told me, is a Pisces state ) and she would laughingly tell me she was banned from the dollar store, ( How do you get yourself banned from a dollar store? ), kicked out of her doctor’s office, frequently saying “This is not the America I grew up in !” I had no idea that someone could be kicked out of those places and it’s interesting I never asked her why. Why? because it happened to Pat. But mostly charming to people, her auto mechanic, Dave, traded his work on her car for a painting of Pat’s. He had it hanging in his automotive office for years. An oil painting of water in a gold luminescent frame. She was proud of that work. The Water Series. And happy Dave liked it enough to buy it. She became attached to people and took care of them, in a way.
I miss Pat’s phone calls, her talking about Paul Klee giving her advice in her dreams, her many friends, fashion designs ( and executions ) she did for Milbridge’s Black Fly Ball every year, the Sunday suppers she attended at the church every week. And how proud she was of Jen and her husband, Lafayette. And of course, Cosima, Rafe and Ashton.
Nope, I guess there’s no replacing Pat Sharp. Touching my heart and life and the lives of so many. I will have to get to the other side to see her again. And with her, it could only be a great adventure!
Patricia Sharp May 4, 1939-December 12, 2023
Pat Sharp in the 1980s painting on her front porch in Medford Lakes, New Jersey.
Copyright 2024-2030 All Rights Reserved Hollis Hildebrand-Mills and Jen Compton No reproduction of Patricia Sharp’s artwork or photograph made without the Sharp or Compton family’s permission
As I have mentioned before, I filled out a sketchbook for The Sketchbook Project, part of The Brooklyn Art Library. The category for this one is, Hollis Hildebrand-Mills 2021 – “Thoughts”. This particular page has nothing to do with anything except I bought one of those diffusers you fill up with a scent which billows out this fragrant steam all night. I like this one especially because you can turn out the lights that change every few seconds. Change them to no light at all, so it doesn’t annoy you when you sleep. I bought it for my allergies, thinking my bronchitis would clear up. The neat thing is, that my husband and the dog don’t snore anymore. Which is really a benefit I never considered. And it is a nice feature. Yes my bronchitis is better, even though my allergist tried to steer me away from the diffuser when I was shopping for one.
Also I had fun drawing this and I can’t say that about all the pages in this book.
Hollis Hildebrand-Mills. All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2021-2025
Page from recent Sketchbook Project entry, July 2, 2021.
Having not written a post for a while, I feel like all is new. Actually all is new, because WordPress has changed their way of doing things. This may not post at all, because of this!
This is a page in my sketchbook; I did this at our community pool a few weeks ago. I am a part of The Sketchbook Project, which is an interesting thing in and of itself.
The company was created by a few artists who actually went to the same art school I did for my post graduate work. They send you a blank sketchbook, you draw in it, then you send it back to them. They digitize it, then it is kept in what they named The Brooklyn Art Library. They used to put all the sketchbooks that were sent back to them in a bus (28,000 at the time) and travelled around the country, setting up the library in major cities. Now the amount of sketchbooks has probably increased by such a huge amount that this is impossible.But, if you go to the Brooklyn Art Library in Brooklyn, NY, you can “check one out”!(#sketchbookproject).
During the pandemic, let’s say between the months of April 2020 – present time (March 2021), like most people, I was stricken. No one knew how to cope. Each person had never been through anything like this. I was coping in my hometown of Atlanta, Georgia.
For the past year and a half, I had been planning a solo show in New York at Ceres Gallery. It was entitled BENEATH. It became obvious that the show scheduled for April 28-May 23, 2020 was not going to take place. That the city, truly, was “beneath”. Even my paintings, done on large canvases and framed collages on paper, had little spores surrounding skulls and a certain amount of gore. All this coming from The Universe, knowing before I did, what was to come. A topical body of work, but one that was to be seen virtually, otherwise held back, until the virus was finished crippling our lives.
The photo below was taken in my basement studio. My downtown studio was “locked down”. I have moved some of the work for this show to the downtown studio and some, like the above, “Echinacea” is in our home, in a studio I had created years ago, in case I couldn’t get to the one in the the city of Atlanta.
The show will take place, once again scheduled for New York, this time in 2022, in September. A year and a half from now. I will include this work, adding and subtracting pieces to fit the times as this work did for April of 2020.
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”
Look at the nice looking couple above. They were our next door neighbors. They left last week to move into a new house. Over the nineteen years we’d lived next door to each other, we became friends. We knew each other’s family secrets. We were in and out of each other’s houses. The one time I actually passed out due to drinking too much, it was when Ed (names have been changed) mixed martinis going down like water. I was on my feet and then I wasn’t. We acted like we were twenty. Eating cookies and brownies with untold ingredients. Drinking wine and OTC Wild Indian Cherry Bark Cough Syrup into the night. Dancing in each other’s basements, (Linda was from Philly too) decorated with lava lamps and disco lights. Yes we will miss them.
When we first moved into the neighborhood, I was skeptical. Both my husband and I had lived in “Intown Atlanta” for so long, I had the prejudice that those who live in Intown Atlanta have, that somehow Intown is a so much more diverse, culturally aware place to live. That the suburbs are boring and very “white male”. Our neighborhood may not be typical of the suburbs, but diversity here means more than having a lesbian living across the street.
In addition to gay couples owning several of the homes here, you practically need a passport to enter. Not that there is a gate at the entrance. There isn’t. People who live here are from all over the world. Our dog smells the incense from the Indian woman walking far down the sidewalk before I even see her in her sari. Three generations of Chinese people live in the house a few down from ours. Iraqi males still live across the way. Nigerian, Israeli, Colombian, Russian neighbors. I think Doug and I, along with our boogying friends next door were the only English speaking people living in this area. I am exaggerating, but you get the idea.
Anyway, we bonded with Linda and Ed. Ed even helped me put up sheetrock walls at the former location of Eyedrum Gallery when I built the projection room for my video, “Bread In The Sky.” The small gallery was hard to split into two spaces, but Ed made it happen. Linda accompanied me to New York City once when business demanded I go on short notice. She and I go to lunch frequently, which I hope will continue even though they don’t live here anymore. Their friendship means a lot to Doug and me. They will never be replaced. It was one of those times, when, we knew what we had when we had it. And not until after it was gone.
My husband and I have gained some weight recently, and in spite our daughter’s pleas, ”Accept that you’re fat. Don’t buy a new scale,” we bought a new scale. A digital one to replace the one with the numbers on it. The old scale had this red needle that waved back and forth with uncertainty. We both felt confident we would know our true weight with the new scale. And surely it would tell us that losing weight would be easy.
It is a Weight Watchers scale. Well, having had a career in marketing before getting into the “art world,” there had to be some sort of catch. You know, “fish while the fish are biting.” Make people sign up when they know they’re getting fat.
Doug got on first. He had no idea he was that heavy. My weight, too, was way more than the old scale told me it was. Okay, we accepted it. Didn’t join Weight Watchers, but tried not to eat the fries.
The next day, Doug came down the stairs, exclaiming he had lost ten pounds! Oh, I guess Weight Watchers figured we would join after the first weigh-in. Then it would throw us a bone of encouragement the next day-hey this weight loss thing is a piece of cake! (so to speak)
My weight continued to drop one pound a day. Even though, on a routine trip to the doctor, the scale had me demoralized again. One day, our new digital scale read me the original first day weight again, and I yelled at it, saying, “What??? I thought I was losing weight?” And then, when I got on again, the scale read the lesser weight it had registered the day before.
Artificial intelligence is making its way into our lives. We are all nervous about it. We fear the power that computers may have over us. But none of us figured on it being easily conned. Like when I yelled at the scale, it was easily bullied. How about that?
I recently ordered these three “on sale” half gallons of acrylic paint from the art supply store at an amazingly inexpensive price. They are not the colors I would choose in a tube, because there is a certain amount of white in them and I like paints that are a purer hue. But since I am working on big canvases, I thought I would give it a try. Plus, each half gallon was only $7.00!!!
The blue has potential, as it is the most true to the Cerulean Blue you find in a tube.
I realize this is not interesting to someone who does not paint. But I probably lost that person a few minutes ago anyway.
My large canvas ( speaking to the folks still with me ,) is starting to collect collage pieces. Amazing huh? I figure my life’s work has been devoted to some form of collage, whether it be in video form or mixing it with paint. So yes, I started cutting out pieces from magazines ( old fashion magazines ) lying around the studio and all of a sudden, my heart started beating a little faster. Yes painting needs collage! I have spoken!
All Rights Reserved Hollis Hildebrand-Mills Copyright 2015
Wrestling. The distillation of good and evil. There is a good guy and a bad guy.
I have a good friend who is a wrestler. I went to one of his matches the other night and I was totally engrossed. Rolls of unravelling toilet paper and crepe paper tossed into the ring. Neon mohawks, tattoos, boos and hisses. Large blubbery thumps and noisy crashes. Flips and other acrobatics. Primitive, you say? It was wonderful.
Good and bad. Not so in real life? My new discovery is, that, even as the managers in the wrestling company do not enter the ring without knowing how to take a fall, the same is true with life. After years of seeing the character flaws in people and sorting through the many nuances, I have come to this conclusion: You are either good or bad.
Take a look at what I consider good. My doctor changes out of his Halloween costume during a crazy party and even though it is in the middle of the night, he makes an emergency house call. Good. The friend next door listens to my woes, hearing me tell the same story again and again. Good. The fellow artist shares her own techniques, gallery contacts and juried show opportunities. Good. The person at the grocery store when my green bean bag breaks. This good person hurries away to the produce section at the back of the store and selects new green beans, clumps at a time. For me! Good.
Ok, you say, where is the bad? And, by the way, I am the one in the ring here, I am only talking about myself and my experiences. I take the falls. I fall against the ropes. These people could be doing nice things for others. But I doubt it. Here we go: The person says good things to me, bad things about me to someone else. Bad. The person lies to me. Bad. One enters my studio, goes through my things, snoops around without my permission. Oh and steals my Booker T. and the MGs disc from my CD player! Bad. You are getting it. One more. A person cheats me in a business deal. Bad. Oh, I used to say, the person is from that type of culture. (Could be this culture.)… That is part of the game. Nope. Not anymore. Bad. Bad. Bad.
Back to wrestling. I go around now, doing the things that cause me to occasionally interact with people and I think of wrestling. No one is passing out rolls of toilet paper for me to stream at the good people.Thank God. And I don’t get the urge to throw a pie in a person’s face here and there. Thank God, again. But, good and bad. It keeps things simple.
Copyright Hollis Hildebrand-Mills 2015 All Rights Reserved
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”
Look at the nice looking couple above. They were our next door neighbors. They left last week to move into a new house. Over the nineteen years we’d lived next door to each other, we became friends. We knew each other’s family secrets. We were in and out of each other’s houses. The one time I actually passed out due to drinking too much, it was when Ed (names have been changed) mixed martinis going down like water. I was on my feet and then I wasn’t. We acted like we were twenty. Eating cookies and brownies with untold ingredients. Drinking wine and OTC Wild Indian Cherry Bark Cough Syrup into the night. Dancing in each other’s basements, (Linda was from Philly too) decorated with lava lamps and disco lights. Yes we will miss them.
Hollis Hildebrand-Mills 