floating | Hollis Hildebrand-Mills

Day Sixty-Eight//Image Sixty-Eight

“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show

I am transitioning out of my present blog format for a very good reason: Showing the 100 collages in my current blog format is coming to a close. (We are on “Sixty-Eight”) To make the transition easier, (soon) , I am planning to blog about other art-related things interspersed with continuing to post the “Afloat” collages until I reach the 100. I will ease out of the front and center visual and few paragraphs of copy into something else.

I have a fear of boring my present followers. I am taking a risk. First, I have tried to keep my blog short. And primarily visual. People do not have time now to do anything but scan.

I am scheduled for another solo show in 2015. A solo show requires me to spend at least an entire year to bring it to its conclusion.

In addition to planning what I will do for the blog, I must first plan what I will do for the show.

And part of the blog material will come from experiences with my new studio and my old studio. Successes and challenges with technique and subject matter, (I’ll keep problems with people to a minimum), materials, time, commuting back and forth for supplies and to work.

I won’t show any finished work, I don’t think. Since the exhibition is for that. I will focus on experience and process. Even in my “Afloat” blog, where I showed finished pieces, I described process and sometimes I drifted into memories. This too will happen. I doubt it will be a “How to Put Together a Solo Show” type of thing. I’ll just see how it goes.

I am not ready to break away from these little collages yet, however.

Day Sixty-Seven/ Image Sixty-Seven

“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.

There is an expression: “walking on air.” It generally means a person is so happy, his or her feet don’t touch the ground. Or that is the way the person feels.

I had this feeling once. It lasted a few months. I could not shake it. I tried, but I continuously felt, literally, that my feet were not connected to the ground.

It was after I had been accepted into a juried exhibition in New York, where Anne Umland, Curator, Painting and Sculpture Department for the Museum of Modern Art had selected one of my pieces for New York exhibition.

I had just started painting seriously, after I had left my full time job in Advertising. I had been in the studio constantly for a few years, working. I saw the ad for this show, applied and got in.

A lot of artists work hard. I am just one of them. Even a former professor of mine said, when I complained of this euphoria, (because, believe me, it became annoying not being connected to the ground!) “Enjoy it now! It won’t last!” Thinking how harsh he was, I kept painting and working.

Nothing on that great a scale has happened since. Similar career achievements and experiences have approached it, but never again did I get that feeling.