Ceres Gallery
547 W27 Street
Suite 201
New York, NY 10001
212.947.6100
http://www.ceresgallery.org
http://www.hollishildebrand-mills.com
My exhibition in the Chelsea section of New York is still going on, receiving high praise. I will be returning soon for a closing reception on the last day of the show: Saturday, May 21st. I will be there from 1PM- 4PM.
Another photograph from my solo exhibition in New York. This one includes two paintings on the right side of the gallery. Again the show is up until May 21st. If you are in the area, “The Cross Series” is at 547 W27 Street, Suite 201, New York, NY 10001. Phone: 212. 947. 6100. The hours: Tuesday -Saturday 12PM-6PM, Open until 8PM Thursday. The gallery director is Stefany Benson. If you go to my show, please introduce yourself!
Copyright Hollis Hildebrand-Mills 2016 All Rights Reserved
Here is my empty studio. I am now in New York and the paintings are in a vacant gallery, shade pulled over their shadow boxes, door to the space locked.
Tomorrow they will be installed on the walls of Ceres Gallery. And on Tuesday, the show opens.
I know what went into the work. I know how much I attended to the detail of organizing this exhibition. What I don’t know, is how well these works will be received by an audience.
I always paint with part fear, part courage. It’s never a neutral mechanical thing. Oh, the mixing is. I try for what is called internal logic. The colors have to relate to one another. And that’s fairly scientific. Composition has certain rules as well. But the overall letting go of the work! The turning it out into the world! The calling of it finished!
Now they are finished. I called them so. All lined up silently behind the black shade, behind the locked door. Waiting to perform. They aren’t mine anymore. I have no control.
Above is the signature image for all publicity, concerning my upcoming New York show. I am exhibiting a select group of paintings from my series, “The Cross Series.”
The group totals nine paintings, each 4’ x 6’. The work is basically abstract, as you can see, with the cross as a grid, anchoring the abstraction.
As I say in my press release, “The cross is the most basic of symbols, primitive, in that it coincidentally represents vertical man/woman standing in a horizontal world… The possibly religious content of the paintings takes a back seat to the form. The cross does not merely belong to Christianity.”
Still, the icon looms powerful enough to be incongruous with the sometimes street art and wild posting-like abstraction.
It has been a long haul, my sweet blog followers. I started out doing a series of work based on my association with my clothes and my memories. I even completed several paintings and a few drawings, using this theme. And I am not ditching it. I have decided to return to it after my New York show. BUT, with a method of painting very much like the painting above. I think I had to do the “Cross Series” first and hit my stride, then return to a personal theme like clothing/memories. The work I previously did on the clothing series was far too figurative, not enough depth and a tad illustrative. I was unhappy with it and the work dragged on and on. No enthusiasm.
If you are in the area, the show opens Tuesday, April 26th. The reception for me is Thursday, April 28th. from 6-8 PM. It is at Ceres Gallery, 547 W 27th Street, Suite 201, New York, NY 10001. It will be up for about three weeks, coming down May 21st.
I am in the process of working on my website. My website needs updating. It still has “Afloat” as my current work. I use collage in “The Cross Series” also, but with paint, (oil and acrylic) charcoal and pencil. It seems that collage has become my life’s work, having used it with video, paint or strictly cut paper from magazines.
I had a friend in art school who called me the Queen Of The Nonsequitur. I think my love of collage has something to do with that: mixing pieces normally not together, making things work.
Copyright 2016 Hollis Hildebrand-Mills All Rights Reserved
Photograph courtesy of Tom Meyer Photography
Mixing up colors. Dark to light. Bright to dull. I miss the days when the yogurt cups had plastic lids.
Copyright Hollis Hildebrand-Mills 2015 All Rights Reserved
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
People are talking about the jealousy they feel when they look at Facebook. Some are deactivating their Facebook accounts to save themselves the “drama.” The drama, of course, being the envy they feel, of not being able to afford to go to the beach, not having a relationship, not getting married, not having kids, whatever. Not having a beautiful job!
It is well known that only the high points of peoples’ lives are presented there. So why are we jealous when someone is smiling behind a Pina Colada?
I think it is because we are desensitized, due to the everyday assault of images coated in glamour. Reality TV has become a standard. We accept it as real. Reality TV came about when no one was around to write screenplays for television shows. There was a writers strike going on at the time. It was cheap, plotless broadcasting. And remains cheap, plotless broadcasting.
Given this, people actually think their ‘friends’ on Facebook are doing better than they are. And the number of ‘likes’ are there to prove it.
I guess it makes sense to brag about your child’s accomplishments rather than talk about how much yeast medicine you have to use due to a long term prescription of antibiotics. Or while you had the flu, the nearest place to vomit was a trash can right outside the movie theatre. Granite countertops do not barf, yell at their kids, have nosebleeds or smear jelly all over their jeans. We all want granite countertops, stainless steel appliances and sunken sinks with “OMG! I can’t believe it!”
Is a selfie of those people taken, straining out from a line at the pharmacy of, say, six people? Or, better yet, a selfie taken of the pharmacist and the sick person? How many ‘likes’ would a person get there?
Because real life is not Facebook. Real life is not Reality TV. And those people who seem to have everything, do not. They just don’t take photographs of themselves when they are wiping a stain off their shirt, eating chips and salsa. The people on Facebook pose for those Facebook pictures, iphone clicking away, with a face they think looks best on them.
A face that looks like they have everything too!
Copyright Hollis Hildebrand-Mills 2014 All Rights Reserved
People like different kinds of pies. And everyone has a favorite. My husband can assess your personality by what kind of pie you like. This method, he came up with in Junior High School and he calls it “Pie o logy.” I’ll start with Apple: You are a fairly basic, conservative person. However, if you are specific about the type of apples you like in your Apple Pie, such as Granny Smith or Macintosh, in any way specific, you have a secret side to you. Like you have a crush on Matt Lauer. Whose favorite pie, I am sure, is Apple. Cherry: You are a Liberal sort of person. You like National Public Radio. And you follow the party line. If you prefer a deep crust on your Cherry Pie, you are not as Liberal as you think you are. LIke you might secretly have voted for John McCain, but you like to look poor and publicly put down anything Republican. Lemon Meringue: A fellow blogger loves this pie and announced he would celebrate his art opening with eating lots and lots of Lemon Meringue Pie. What does this mean? My husband says if you like this kind of pie, you are a little acerbic, droll and witty. Not necessarily political. Judging from what I know about my internet friend, I would say this is correct. A few more. Banana Cream Pie: Your jokes fall flat. And there is a hint of exploration in the things you do. You go off the beaten path, a little. Like you might wear a safari congo hat. (An example of a joke falling flat!) Sweet Potato Pie is a bear hugging type person. And Key Lime, you are a kook. (Although I have been known to drive to the grocery store and buy Kenny’s Key Lime Pie at 10:0PM) Do not judge. There are just a few more: Rum-Raisin, as featured in the photograph above, can be something you love, but don’t eat very often. However, if it’s your favorite pie, get ready. You’ve got a problem. You light candles instead of using electric lights. And… no offense, (I am guilty here too) you are probably into the occult. And you like taxidermy as decor. You may even have a room full of dolls. Whipped cream on top of any pie tones down the characteristics. Pecan Pie means you are nutty. I guess loving a nut pie would be emblematic of nuttiness. But seriously, in Pie o logy, if your favorite pie is Pecan, you are on the off-beat side. My personal favorite is Blackberry Cobbler. He says that if you like this pie, you are wild. Blackberries indicate this. The crustiness of cobbler hints at being conservative, possessing humanity, and being centered or grounded. Lots of sugar forming a glaze on top means that you are sweet, but with resistance. My husband’s favorite is Strawberry Rhubarb: Meaning, if you like this, you are clever, brilliant and an off-the-wall radical! You might have a gun under your bed. You may be a Libertarian. I really don’t want to know this about him. We do not have a gun under our bed. Does this make me doubt the science of Pie o logy? You decide. copyright 2014 Hollis Hildebrand-Mills All rights reserved. copyright 2014 “Pie o logy” Douglas C. Mills All reserved.
Reblog Number Nine
This is an unframed collage from my solo show “Afloat”. Ceres Gallery. New York. Photo taken in my studio just after I finished it. My love of water. Joyful feeling of the man in front of the wave. Reminds me of childhood times in the summer.
Reblog Number Five
“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.
Very recently, I purchased an infrared sauna. Now, this idea came to me from my allergist who told me it would clear the toxins from my body, such as environmental toxins, like metal and plastic. He also told me it would help relieve a sinus problem I have had for a very long time.
I even heard from some metaphysically minded folks that infrared sauna use would eliminate “bad energy.” Such as someone glaring at you in the supermarket, which apparently goes into your system. Or more blatant bad events, like a car accident or a fight with your spouse. Or someone’s jealously that manifests into so-called “thought evil” doing your body harm.
Infrared waves (heat waves) go through the sauna, and unlike a regular sauna, a person doesn’t get as hot. But profuse sweating occurs. The toxins come out of the…
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Hollis Hildebrand-Mills 