About Flagpole. (Athens, Ga.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (June 8, 2011)
MESHAKAI WOLF GOING NATIVE We begin a new series this week with a peek inside local artists' studios to find out more about where and how they make art. I begin with an artist whose work is focused on documenting her environment and whose peripatetic process has been described as "post-studio" ait. Hope Hilton is a Georgia native who studied photography and printmaking at the Atlanta College of Art and earned her MFA at the City University of New York's Hunter College in 2008. Her recent work includes a series of walks though public spaces to memo rialize places and events related to her family's history. She to the walls... and I'll go ahead and say that I love being sur rounded by my own work, even if it sounds arrogant. I learn a lot from myself when I spend time with my photographs and drawings, which are like research for larger projects. I experi ment a lot with materials in my studio before a project figures out how it wants to be, so I have paper scraps, pencil marks and colors all over the place. Most of it never leaves the room. FP: How much of your identity as an artist is tied to the par ticular place you inhabit now? HH: I was motivated to move here on a drive to the Georgia Organics Conference in 2010.1 saw all .the farmland and the preserved/reclaimed architec ture and just knew I needed to be here—somewhere with roots. After grad school I spent time in other cities, and it took that to realize my geography is the South. I never considered myself Southern until recently, even though I was born and raised in Georgia. My work is so regional because I can barely get out of my yard without needing to identify a weed or-a berry or a bug, or go to the library to learn about the Creek Indians that lived along the Broad River or Southern food or the slaves that became sharecroppers down the road. Right now I just want to spend the rest of my life learning about where I am. The place where I am now has everything to do with what I'm working on. It's paradise as far as I'm concerned. Hope Hilton and her brother. Jonathan, have matching tattoos depicting the outline of the state of Georgia. also makes botanical drawings of native medicinal plants based on her research of WPA slave narratives. Hilton is also a designer and educator who teaches art at Treehouse Kid & Craft in Athens. I spoke to her from her home in Winterville, where her studio is located in an old farmhouse on lots of land. Flagpole: What is an object in your studio that reveals some thing about your art-making process? HH: I have a really great quote by [art critic] Lucy Lippard from On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art and Place above my computer that I read regularly: "Travel is the only context in which some people ever look around. If we spent half the energy looking at our own neighborhoods, we'd probably learn twice as much." This quote is like my talisman, reminding me of the alchemy I'm capable of—that I don't need to stick with the formula. It also reminds me of my goals to learn about where I am and where I'm from, whose backbones I'm resting on, who carried me, who I need to forgive, what to forget, and what to understand and work through. FP: Your artwork often involves walking through environments to attend to the sights, sounds and smells of that experience. What surrounds you while you work? HH: I need a lot of quiet and a lot of space. When I lived in Brooklyn I would work overnight just for the quiet. Here in Winterville, I am lucky to have the sounds of the birds and the smells of the outdoors, and I've found that I don't need to stay up all night to get the quiet I crave. I am a collector of sorts, so I am surrounded by spent Civil War bullets, photographs of family homes, historic documents, photographs that make me laugh, photographs that make me sad; a few poems are taped FP: What is your current project? What is the next goal, trip and dream? HH: I'm currently working on identifying plants that were used by slaves in this area for medicine and protection. My first month here I went to the library and checked out a book of the WPA narra tives that had pages and pages of oral histories of the area, sperifically of locals who had been slaves in their childhood and their memories. As someone who knows nothing at all about plants, it's been really interesting to find a lot of plants that I'm learning about growing right here on my land. In late June, I'm going to teach art in the Dominican Republic with a local organization, Cucuyo, and I'm teaching beyond the classroom about the love of place, which is called "topo- phiiia." We're going to take walks, record sounds, interview locals and make color studies of our sur roundings. I also really enjoy teaching and curating, so I like to keep myself on my toes in these areas and celebrate the people around me. My dream is to publish a book. I don't know what it will be yet, but it's coming. Leam more about Hilton’s work and see lots of beautiful photos of her bucolic studio and current projects at www.hopehilton.com. Side Project: Hilton is also the co-curator, along with Aurelie Frolet, of the current exhibition at Mercury Art Works at Hotel Indigo called "Fascination." This exhibition features art work by Amanda Jane Burk, Anthony Stanislav Wislar, Chris Wyrick, Gretchen Eisner, Leslie Snipes and Rusty Wallace. Precise and minimalist, Snipes' graphite drawings on white paper are patterned lines and dashes so controlled it seems impossible they were created by a human hand. On the oppo site wall, Wislar's "Mr. Moon" paintings have quite a different appearance. Using white, black and gray gouache, his expres sive brushstrokes depict a man on the moon. Returning us to the Sputnik years, Burk's digital prints of black-and-white pho tographs appear to be taken from 1960s-era school yearbooks and corporate archives. In "My Mother Was a Lady," she uses India ink, acrylic paint and colored pencil to alter the images, adding flowers and a beaded canopy to a print of three men in military dress. The exhibition is on view through July 8. Don't Miss It Before It's Gone: Jonathan Jacquet's series of paintings "Portraits from the Burning Ring of Fire" is at OCAF, through June 10. Caroline Barratt arts@fiagpole.com TUESDAY, JUNE 7 | WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8 FRIDAY, JUNE 10 I SATURDAY, JUNE 11 TUESDAY, JUNE 14 FRIDAY, JUNE 17 8.26-BLIND BOYS Of At 11.16 • CHARLIE HUNTER 11.19 -JORMA KAUKON] /9S t. DOUGHERTY SI.. AlHfNS. <jA 'y 706.254.6909 fOK TICKETS & SHOW 11 MIS WWW.MELTINGP0INTATHENS.COM OR CALL Hit BOX OFFICE 6909 Bat. Drink. Listen Closely. I Eat. 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