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
Off and and running with my new painting series! It’s a series about memories of my clothes. I remember events in my life and the clothes I was wearing at the time. Doesn’t have to be a special occasion. It’s just a little filing system I have going on. Mention a time we were together or a place I visited and I know exactly what I was wearing.
I have finished the first painting. I was humbled and honored when, once again, Jerry Saltz, Senior Art Critic for New York Magazine “liked” the painting on Instagram. I was thrilled! He has 160K followers! How could it be possible he really liked my painting? I continue to marvel at that thought.
Above is the first painting. It is 26″ x 36″. Acrylic, oil, paper, sharpie and charcoal on canvas.
A dear blogger friend of mine believes that every work of art needs to have a title. She is not the only one. A lot of people believe this is necessary to guide the viewer into the work. For years, I was vehemently against this, spewing on and on about how visual art is a visual thing and a title would be contrary to the experience, etc. But recently I had a change of heart. I thought, if I make up my titles at the computer when I am about to send my jpegs off to a juried exhibition or grant application, why not have a little fun with it? Not just “Yellow Flower” (as I am scrounging around in my brain for some written connection to what I am looking at on the computer screen.) I am making up the title anyway.
This first painting’s title is, “Dress Me, I’m Your Mannequin.” I got a smile at the computer! And maybe the viewer can see the abstraction with thoughts of hangers and clothing in mind.
The view of my painting, “Gabriel” from the hallway. My solo show, THE CROSS SERIES, until May 21, 2016. Closing reception 1-4PM. http://www.ceresgallery.org
http://www.hollishildebrand-mills.com
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
Above is a photograph of my art studio in town, all cleaned up and ready for work! The accumulation of wooden stretcher frames, at the far side of the big table on the right is waiting for me to stretch canvas over them. My next solo show is in New York, April, 2016.
This past year has been rough for me. My mother died four days before Christmas. The darkest time of the year. Our sweet daughter left for college in the fall.
I aptly named this section of my blog, “Piece Of My Heart.” And have written things such as “Vince Vaughn Bought My Daughter’s Prom Dress”, “The Shredding Skirt” and “Pie O Logy.” I did get carried away, and may continue to do so.
Even though it has only been a few months, I think, “Did I really tell the world about the mining accident?” (Now, now. I did not say it was I who had the relative who took one step back too far!) I could use some relatives now. Some relatives who will stretch my canvases and tell me what a good a painter I am!
I have thought about giving up the blog. But I enjoy it so much.
Although you might think i should post my painting in progress, ( and I may do so from time to time ), I would rather keep each post an artwork unto itself. Painting is totally separate from the keyboard.
I need to get back to work.
Copyright Hollis Hildebrand-Mills 2014 All rights reserved
When I was living in Philadelphia, after attending art school and between jobs, I wandered down the street to a bookstore with its doors open. In a massive pile was the first edition of the book “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again).” I bought the book.
This very famous artist, Andy Warhol seemed so accessible! We think alike! And how far is New York from here anyway!?
After a bold moment of courage, I called Andy Warhol Enterprises in Manhattan. The man answering the phone was very nice. I wanted to work for them, I said. In the Art Department of Interview Magazine. He said, please send us a tape of your voice. Andy would really like your voice.
So I did. But as the saying goes, I never heard back from them. And, to be honest, I was a little afraid of The Factory and all the goings-on there. Not the man himself, but those who associated with him. I never pursued it.
After reading subsequent books of Warhol’s, I learned that he kept time capsules. Andy Warhol was an organized hoarder, much like I am. That everything he received by mail or that which was given to him, he put in a box, marked with the year.
When he died, the time capsules were put in the soon to be built Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
My voice is in the Andy Warhol Museum!
Hoarding. I think of hoarders as people with stuff forming a landslide in their homes.
Until we had our basement finished. And we designated a certain part of the finished basement to be unfinished. That was when I thought of our family as hoarders. We did a lot of purging and sorting. To attempt to revamp the hoarder self image.
My husband collects music. He has 10,000 vinyl records and 8,000 CDs. While the basement was being worked on, these boxes of music were stored next to the furnace in the designated unfinished part of the basement. He also encourages others to keep their collections. Or make new collections. He is the person who, when I posted on Facebook: “What should I do with all my Martha Stewarts?” (I have been collecting the magazine since she first published. I have every issue.) My husband said, “Keep them!”
Our house is immaculate. Each room, people go into, saying, “What a nice room to read a book in!” Very sparse. I have a thing about neatness and cleanliness. You can tell. But to read a book? I spend a lot of time maintaining the neatness.
We hoard. Not only music, but Fiesta dishes. Many different kinds of china. And crystal serving dishes. Clothes. Dolls. Little porcelain shoes, also in boxes like the dolls. Bordering on hoarding.
The music on vinyl has gone into decorative crates in the finished part of the basement. The CDs in shelving in the unfinished part. However, we too have that cliched hoarders characteristic. When we wanted to find something like the wire that hooks the computer to the printer, we had to sort through a box labels “wires”, and delving into the assortment of extension cords, picture wires and Christmas light blinkers was a journey unto itself.
“Water On Paper 2″, pencil and charcoal on paper, 5″ x 5”, 2014
Ceres Gallery is having a group show. In June. The exact date of the reception is June 26, 6-8 PM. It is a Thursday. The gallery is located in Chelsea, an established gallery section of New York. 547 West 27th Street. New York, NY 10001. Phone: 212 947 6100. The second floor. You can take the stairs, if you prefer.
I did the piece for this group show and am pleased with it. It is based on a painting I did a few years back. The painting had collage in it and the abstraction was based on the spaces in between trees. In the painting, I chose the pieces from magazines, not for their subject matter, but for their potential for volume and how they related to the paint.
The charcoal translation is interesting (bad word, interesting) to me, since the face from the painting comes through as significant here, where in the very large painting, it was just a shape.
I hope some of you can attend my reception! It would be so nice to see you!
We had an ice storm here in Atlanta this past winter. Not a nice storm. Put the separation between the words in the right place. Ice storm. You know the one. We, in Atlanta, looked like fools on TV and the internet.
The storm I am writing about (We actually had two.) started out as a snow storm. Just like any other. But the traffic! Lord, the traffic! And the slipping and sliding!
A person lost his life. A baby was born. It took the average person to move at the rate of one eighth of a mile per hour. If that.
Yes, there was heroism. We Americans always go for that when reporting such horrors. My husband was in his car along with the rest of Atlantans, arriving at his intended destination. He had to turn around because the person he was dropping off at the bus….well, the buses were not running. It took him an hour to turn around and he got home at midnight. He had been driving for twelve hours. To go ten miles. To the bus and home. Ten miles roundtrip.
Because people were frustrated in the crazy traffic, a lot of people left their cars and walked that night. The next day, cars were strewn all over expressways and backroads, abandoned like discarded toys on Christmas Day. It looked like The Rapture or a science fiction movie.
No, my husband did not spend the night in the shelter of a grocery store, using feminine products as a pillow. No, he did not experience the terror of being disconnected from our child because he had no idea if she was at the school or not. No, he did not spend the night in his car with no one knowing, due to a drained charge in his cell.
But it was awful.
Hollis Hildebrand-Mills 