HILLYER SPEAKS WITH RACHEL SCHMIDT AND MICHELE MONTALBANO

After being closed briefly for renovations Hillyer is readily anticipating the upcoming September exhibition featuring the works of Rachel Schmidt and Michele Montalbano! With so much excitement for this upcoming show we spoke with both artists as they shared a little more about themselves and their work. These two individuals give a nice preview as to what the September show has in store; this is one you will not want to miss!

Rachel Schmidt draws inspiration from the way life exists in urban environments for her current show “Apocaloptomist: A Future True Story,” which utilizes scale manipulation, architecture, play, and landscape. Schmidt’s love for stories, both “those based in reality and those based on the “realities” found in a surreal myth, legend, or fairytale” is used as a guide for further artist exploration and the ability to touch on various topics and use of different mediums. Through the use of these tools Schmidt is exploring the myths that are developing in the always expanding urban wilderness that plays a dominant role in most contemporary human beings lives. Schmidt received a BFA in Textile Design and Sculpture from the University of Kansas and continued on to get her MFA in Studio Art from MICA, while always learning from experimentation and fellow artists as well. Most recently she has been working mainly with 3-D digital print collages and animation, as seen with these works.

Taking inspiration from the bible story of Babel, illuminated manuscript, and typography Michele Montalbano creates a series of mixed-media works that express the lack of understanding between individuals. It is this language barrier that creates a separation between “us and them” and spurs a growth of resentment.
The story of Babel tells of an angry god that has confounded human language making communication between people impossible. Words, letters, alphabets, and symbols, of various origins are used, in accordance with decorative elements from a variety of cultures. A mixture of elements borrowed from antiquity as well as contemporary art styles and forms of communication are used. As Montalbano states, “all of these elements live together in a beautifully composed but completely indiscernible world.” While she uses painting and printmaking most frequently these works embrace etching, aquatint, letterpress, gilding, drawing, among others. Montalbano received her MFA from George Washington University where she was able to gain a strong foundation of traditional drawing and painting, which she has been able to build on since.

Hillyer Art Space (HAS): What first got you interested in art?
Rachel Schmidt (RS): I have been interested in making art as long as I can remember. I always knew it was what I wanted to do and I have never regretted it.
Michele Montalbano (MM): I watched my father paint and work in wood and that is where my love and respect for art and beautifully crafted work began. I started drawing and painting with a passion when I lived on the island of Montserrat for a year. While there, I was given the gift of time and the inspiration of the beauty of the Caribbean. I went to art school when I returned home.
HAS: How do you feel your artistic process has evolved over time?
RS: I’ve learned to take more chances but at the same time trust myself and the viewer more. I have moved from the more literal to the more metaphorical and I have evolved to value a sense of humor in my artwork.
MM: After graduating from such a traditional school, I had to look for a way of breaking from tradition and finding my own voice. The process and experimentation became important. I am still drawn to traditional materials and techniques but I use and combine them in new ways. For example, with the Babel series, intaglio plates are created in the traditional manner then printed on metal leaf and combined with letterpress.
HAS: What are some themes that you explore through your work?
RS: I don’t have a central theme to all of my work, I like to wonder around in a thematic arena, but even then, so many ideas are connected to others that it is hard to nail down a particular one. I guess I am focused on stories that explore how we live and how we exist within the world.
HAS: What do you feel the viewer can take away after viewing your work? Is there anything specific that you hope the viewer comes away with?
RS: I hope the viewer can take away an experience. I would like the viewer to feel that I posed a question and that they came to their own conclusion.
MM: My objective is to create an exhibit where the viewer might reflect on the feeling of separation created by the language barrier and also see the beauty in the combination of materials and techniques.
HAS: Do you have any goals in terms of your work or where you would like to be in years to come?
RS: I would like to have a larger pool of resources to create larger more interactive projects.
MM: My future goal with this series is to play with other themes/ideas that presented themselves as I worked on this exhibit. I am adding other elements and techniques to the existing work.
HAS: What role do you believe art plays in society? And do you believe your work can contribute to that?
RS: The role that art plays in society is such a difficult role to immediately quantify. Art is a way of viewing, learning, and analyzing society that can have enormously positive impacts on other more measurable endeavors. Innovations in society don’t come from people who are taught to think like everyone else. So naturally I hope to contribute to society by continuing to offer an alternative way of viewing the world in hopes that it helps others find their individual voices as well. I also hope to contribute interesting experiences and the occasional laugh.
MM: Art can present a new way of seeing the mundane; it can stir the imagination and bring beauty to a space.
HAS: What are some other hobbies that you have outside of your art?
RS: I think traveling is extremely important; I am always game for a trip to a foreign country. And I have recently discovered the pure joy that comes from playing laser tag.
MM: I love to spend time outdoors, usually on my bicycle. I collect words and heart shaped rocks. I study Italian, cook a little and piddle around with interior design.
Make sure to check out our First Friday event on September 5thfor a first look at the exhibition which will run through September 27th.

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HILLYER INTERVIEWS CAPITAL FRINGE PERFORMER JEREMY GOREN

This July, Hillyer is happy to host a Capital Fringe performance, Wistaria, a traveling meeting that questions our past and present through a hallucinatory amalgam of U.S. texts, traditional song, and actions both mysterious and banal. Wistaria appears in homes and odd spaces, searching alternative ways of living in art and society. Created in part during the 2013-2014 LEIMAY Fellowship, CAVE, Brooklyn, NY, the performance is a transgressive anti-narrative that jumps through U.S. history, from an imagined Masonic-ritual past all the way to the immediate present, following the transformations of the tent-revival Methodist hymn that became “John Brown’s Body” and then “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Wistaria incorporates one new actor in each performance, as well as a few audience volunteers – and the audience is given songbooks and invited to join in. “We sometimes present a musical guest as a second course – and we always serve deviled eggs.”

Performers at Hillyer will be Jeremy Goren, Stephanie Eiss, and Jenna Kirk have been working together since the beginning of 2013. They have performed Wistaria at several locations in New York, in collaboration with a changing cadre of artists. They will be joined by Richard Sheinmel, Laura Bernas, and Alexandra Zajaczkowski for these performances. This production is presented as a part of the 2014 Capital Fringe Festival, a program of the Washington, DC non-profit Capital Fringe.

Here we interview Jeremy Goren to give you a little more insight about Wistaria. Performances are on Friday, July 18th at 8pm & Saturday, July 19th at 2pm. Tickets are on sale now!

Hillyer Art Space (HAS): What does the “Wistaria” refer to?
Jeremy Goren (JG): In this case – and in this spelling – “wistaria” alludes to William Faulkner’s novel Absalom, Absalom. (The more conventional spelling is “wisteria”.) I’m obsessed with this book. I’ve read it several times over ten years or so, and each time I realize I’d previously understood nothing of it. Not even the basic plot. The structure, tone, poetry, and particular type of opacity masking a complex depth of meaning and mystery lie, for me, at the source of Wistaria. For me, it’s the kind of underground Bible of the USA – a dark current beneath the mainstream – pulsing out our history, the violent throws of a new kind of nation being born out of blood, slavery, tragedy – and with the grand depth, scale, and distance of a true creation myth.

HAS: Wistaria incorporates one new actor in each performance, how does this rotating role affect each individual performance?

JG: This means that each time Wistaria has appeared a different person has taken on the durational task of cracking and peeling hard-boiled eggs during the performance. Changing the performer each time started by chance but quickly became deliberate. The role has to do with the marginalization and servitude of different types of minorities in this country, simultaneously with the realization that these groups have actually been the creators of culture and, in many ways, the conscience of the nation. They look in at the folly of the mainstream and keep time in the darkness. And, their status outside the privileged spaces of the country hint at a kind of possibility of transcending the universe – thus the egg, a traditional symbol of universe, eternity, rebirth, pointing towards the ineffable place that words cannot reach and no tongue has sullied. But I saw this only in retrospect. It was not a calculation. On a less symbolic level, it’s interesting for us, as a small group working together for more than a year, to consistently welcome in a new playmate for a moment. In these performances at Hillyer, we’ll actually have several new performers. Guests in the home. Plus, you know, life is transient.

HAS: You put a call out on your Facebook page for volunteers to host a performance in their homes. How did this practice evolve and why are performances in homes significant to Wistaria?

JG: This practice evolved way before we came along, of course. Traveling performers appearing in private homes is a millenia-old practice. In this case, I started thinking about it while visiting my parents for Thanksgiving two years ago. We were driving through Potomac (Maryland) at night, out where all those huge houses sit brooding on large, well-groomed plots of land. And I suddenly thought of a medieval acting troupe, wandering through the countryside, happening upon a castle, and going in to entertain (or roast) the duke and his friends. I like it because it takes us further out of the Theatre Industry and its commercial, capitalist model – which predominates even in the “off-off-Broadway” world and the “experimental-theatre” world. And then I came across Jere C. Mickel’s Footlights on the Prarie, which details the wandering theatre troupes – particularly the traveling-tent troupes – that criss-crossed the USA in the 19th and early 20th centuries. I’d never known these had existed. But, this practice had been here – and clearly related to the tent-revival tradition, which, from my meager reading, really played a formative role in our society and its culture – particularly its music. I’m also interested in how this kind of circumstance of performance changes expectations and experiences for doer and watcher. What possibilities exist in this circumstance? Plus, it’s much nicer to hang in someone’s home than in a theater.

HAS: What is the significance of the deviled eggs?

JG: Well, consider the significance of eggs I mentioned above. Now, add in the Devil, the idea of which has exerted a strangely prominent influence in the U.S. national mentality. Deviling food, as I understand it, began as such in England within the past several hundred years, meaning just a way of making your food spicy – hot, like Hell. Somehow deviled eggs became not only a rather emblematic U.S. dish, often associated with the southern part of the country, but many people we’ve encountered have deep personal associations with them and favorite recipes for them – and there is a great variety of ways to make them. I, for instance, thought they were Jewish food (until last year!) because my grandmother always served them at pesach. So, what does it mean as a national practice to take this symbol of rebirth and eternity, slice it in half, mash it up, send it to the Devil, and ingest it?

HAS: The performance is described as “a traveling meeting that questions our historical past and present through a hallucinatory amalgam of U.S. texts, traditional song and actions, mysterious and banal” as well as “an intimate meeting of people that questions and may threaten – through text, action and song – the story we use to placate our minds”. I guess my question would be does the performance seek to encourage the viewer to rethink their definition of “Americanness” and about America’s identity in international opinion? To re-imagine the histories we’ve been taught about what America means and our place within the international community? Do you come from a perspective of questioning our national identity?
JG: I don’t like to prescribe any experience or dogma to an audience. I feel that my job is to open a space for us as a temporary community and as individuals to perhaps become aware of something in ourselves and our society and to stimulate a reconsideration. To question, yes, but it’s less on a political or mundane level. To say it’s about questioning our national identity is right, but that’s only the surface of it, and if we stay there, we won’t get anywhere. That’s just a tool, a vehicle for questioning ourselves on a more significant level, to think about how we’re living and want to live, as individuals and as a society. It’s not about policy-making. Ultimately, it should move beyond a particular nation-state and touch on the possibilities of the universal and the eternal. Isn’t that what art is for? If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t have had to write any of the text you cite. That’s part of the negotiation with the venture-capitalist nature of art in our society – you have to market at least to some degree. As soon as I write those words, I know they become lies. So, you know, don’t take them too seriously.

HAS: Does holding a performance in Washington DC hold any particular significance to Wistaria?

JG: For sure. As the Congressional stenographer informed us recently: “The Constitution would not have been written by Freemasons!” But it was. This city is the seat of power, the heart of the official, national myth machine – and my native town.

Thanks Jeremy!

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WRAPPING LEONARD CAVE: ADVENTURES IN THE WAREHOUSE

Snugly sat against brown packing paper and rolls upon rolls of bubble wrap in the sedan of Hillyer Art Space’s Gallery Director, we (two Gallery Interns and a Gallery Director (don’t worry, this isn’t the start of a terrible joke)) headed to the warehouse in Baltimore where International Arts & Artists stores their artworks. Our mission: to prepare four Leonard Cave works for shipping.

Who was Leonard Cave? Lenny was a local D.C. sculptor and leader of an artistic community. He was born in South Carolina, the third of four brothers. He studied Fine Arts at the University of Maryland, and after he completed his graduate work, became a professor at Georgetown University. After seven years of holding a position as an adjunct professor, he started teaching for public school districts in the DMV. He even established an Academy of Commercial and Fine Art for the Montgomery County School District. In addition to teaching, in 1984 Lenny founded and ensured the stability of the Washington Sculptors Guild, an organization dedicated to forging a space for sculpture and sculptors in the DC community. Though a southern boy at heart, Lenny helped to forge the DMV artistic and sculptural community that thrives today.
Upon his death in 2006, Hillyer Art Space and its parent organization IA&A, the president of which was a close personal friend of Lenny’s, were honored to be willed several of Lenny’s sculptures. Having only received them earlier in 2013, we are been planning to hold an event during Fall 2013 in order to offer the collection up for public sale. In the meantime, however, auction galleries in New Orleans requested a few of his pieces to be put up for auction. Happy to bring Lenny and his legacy back to the south, we planned a trip to our storage unit.
We needed to ensure the works would not be damaged in the drive to New Orleans (We shipped works 2, 12, 15, and 16. Those plus his other works can be found here). This meant we needed to bring out the big guns. And by guns, I of course mean loads of bubble wrap, packing tape, duct tape, and packing paper alongside other tools (like our new favorite sharpie, the magnum, which we didn’t even know was a thing until last Thursday). With all of that, we felt prepared enough to face the tall stacks and infinite corridors of CDS logistics. We rode on, arriving just outside of Baltimore in just over an hour.
After locating and cataloging each of Lenny’s sculptures, we enlisted the aid of the warehouse workers who operate the forklifts (you know, those vehicles on which, regrettably, we weren’t permitted to play) to carefully maneuver the pieces we needed.
As we watched, eager to get our hands on these large wooden sculptures, we became nostalgic and thought back to earlier months when we and Lenny were first becoming acquainted. So we made sure that we took photos with these wooden legacies of Lenny. We couldn’t help but appreciate the unique relationship Lenny has with HAS, but like a parent sending her child away from home, we were glad to be sending Lenny off into the world to be better appreciated.

After uncovering the sculptures from plastic wrapping meant to protect from accumulating dust layers, we re-wrapped them in paper and bubble wrap, cardboard corners and packing tape. Packing the smaller pieces in a box, we secured the sculptures in place by using smaller cardboard boxes, more packing tape, and more bubble wrap as buffer.

(You should know that the temptation to pop all of those bubbles was strong, but we triumphantly resisted.)

Though we didn’t get to pop the bubbles, we were able to put some play to use. Our Director, Sam, put to good use her knowledge of plastic wrap. Awkwardly twisting and winding our way around these large sculptures with various protrusions was a task, but one that we successfully accomplished.

After washing the dirt from our hands and knees, and after removing residual tape from places we didn’t even know we had it, we were ready to leave. Leaving the packages to be picked up by the shipping company the following morning (which we were notified safely arrived in New Orleans earlier this week), we said a temporary farewell to Lenny.

Until next time, Mr. Cave.

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REMEMBERING A DC ART GIANT: WILLEM DE LOOPER

Mr. Willem de Looper was one of those rare, incredible people who slipped quietly into the DC art scene and, over the course of 59 years, from his immigration here in 1950 until his death in 2009, changed it forever.
Born and raised in The Hauge during the second World War, de Looper was fascinated by American culture from an early age. During his childhood, he told Archives of American Art,
“My only art experience was – well, it’s not really art experience. It was exposure to the United States, and that took form in two ways. We listened as soon as we could after the war to the AFN… And so I became very early quite interested in America… I mean, also Americans – let’s face it – they were looked at – and Canadians and the British – they were looked at as liberators.”
This fascination grew until 1950, when de Looper –only seventeen years old– set sail on the New Amsterdam bound for America. It was during the subsequent years, while he attended American University, that de Looper’s ambition to be a professional artist solidified. Trying to be practical, he at first turned his talents toward illustration. Fate had another plan for Willem de Looper, however: just as he was hired to join the illustration staff for a department store catalog, his life was turned upside-down. “In retrospect again it looks like a total disaster – I got drafted in the American Army,” de Looper explained. “And without making a peep or anything or making any attempt to go into graduate school, I just went.”
De Looper drew and painted as much as he could during his two years in a transportation company of the US Army, and upon his return he found work as a security guard at the Philips Collection. Surrounded by art, de Looper’s painting went into overdrive. In his studio apartment on 20th and N de Looper spent every spare moment painting. His style slowly evolved from figurative painting to abstraction. In his own words,
“I painted in many styles, developing my first interest, which obviously had been born somewhat earlier, towards abstraction. And always, you know, it’s one of those things that people are constantly asking me about: do you – how do you start painting abstract paintings? You do that by learning how to deal with form and – but also you have to create not only the colors but also the form and all that sort of thing. And I did that, I think, by painting first landscapes and figures that became more abstract or – to use that word fairly loosely, as I went along from painting to painting.”

“I started really using my eyes when I was at the Phillips,” de Looper explained.By 1966, the security guard was showing his work in a solo exhibition at Jefferson Place Gallery, one of the premier exhibition spaces for the emerging Washington Color School. By 1975 de Looper had a solo exhibition at the Phillips Collection, where he was now an assistant curator. He was head curator of the Phillips Collection by 1982, a post he held for five years before retiring in 1987 to focus more on his own painting.
De Looper never stopped experimenting. His paintings phased through horizontal geometry in earthtones during the 1970s to freer brushstrokes of vibrant color during the 1980s, switching also between oil paints or water-based acrylic paints, canvas or paper. His various processes also shifted dramatically over the years, from pouring paint onto a canvas laid out on the floor to traditional easel painting to dyeing paper.
Willem de Looper died of emphysema on January 30, 2009, at the age of 76. He left an indelible mark on the Washington D.C. art scene, and is deeply missed to this day by his many friends and admirers.

International Arts and Artists, the parent organization of the Hillyer Art Space, is looking to sell Unknown, Willem de Looper, 1979 63″x 48″ acrylic on canvas (pictured above) to benefit the Hillyer Art Space. Please direct any inquiries to (202) 338-0680 or rachelw@artsandartists.org

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MEMBERSHIP SPOTLIGHT: AMY HUGHES BRADEN

Membership Associate Ginny DeLacey sat down with Amy Hughes Braden as she was installing her show, Red and Grey Paintings, in Hillyer’s NIN9 Members’ Gallery. Amy discussed her fascination with relationships, her issues with ownership and her love of collaboration. Amy’s show will be on view from February 1-25.

Ginny DeLacey: What is your background as an artist?
Amy Hughes Braden: I had supportive parents so I took art classes growing up. It never seemed like an unreasonable idea to be an artist. It was always just the track I was going down.
I went to Pratt right out of high school, but I ended up graduating from the Corcoran. I liked the Corcoran’s program because it was really open and I had a lot of freedom.
GD: Can you discuss the importance of relationships in your paintings and collages?
AHB: Personally, I find family dynamics very interesting. I’m interested in the relationship of relatives, of people you’re related to but you may or may not know. I have a stack of photographs of my grandma when she was about my age that I love to look at because I’m interested in exploring the artifacts of lives lived. Also, I’m a huge extrovert so I need to be constantly interacting with people, even if it’s within a painting.
I’m also into exploring relationships in a more formal way. My husband and I were just discussing how each of the works function more like a paragraph so when you see them all together they are understood in a different, perhaps more complete way.
GD: You’ve recently started mixing painting and collage, could you explain that transition?
AHB: I’ve always kept and collected bits of paper, interesting images from magazines or pamphlets. I have boxes of these papers and every so often I take them out, sort them and reexamine the images. Recently I’ve been using photocopied image. To me they bring up issues of copyright, ownership and authorship in the age of the internet.
I like to take other people’s work and use it in mine. I’ve stolen my brother’s sketchbook and built works on top of his art. I call it a collaboration, but sometimes he gets mad at me. I look at it as I’m not doing anything new, no one’s doing anything new so I think it’s silly to cling onto claims of ownership.
GD: What artists or artistic movements inspire you?
AHB: I’m so bad at answering that question. Francis Bacon and Philip Guston have inspired some of my recent work. The Dada movement has always been appealing to me; they were just fed up with everything. I think their ideas still have a lot of relevance today.
GD: When you start a work do you have a final painting in mind or does it evolve as you go?
AHB: Sometimes they evolve. One of the paintings in this show was originally a portrait that I had done for my thesis. I decided I didn’t want it anymore so I painted over all but one tiny section. I’m very reactionary when I paint, which can get me into trouble. I use source images for any figures that I include in my work, but I don’t usually have the whole composition pre-planned. Like I said, I’m reactionary. I’m very impatient when I paint, which is one reason why I don’t use oils. I work very impulsively and instinctually.
GD: How long does it take you to create a work?
AHB: It depends. I always work on at least three paintings at a time and then I always have a few collages going at once. I’ve found that this helps me make better decisions, or it keeps me from getting tunnel vision on one piece and overworking it. I made that painting [referring to Mrs. Henry White, above] in three hours. I was challenged to create a painting in three hours and that was the end result. There was a lot of energy going into it, knowing I had such a limited amount of time to work, and I became less inhibited. I only had time to execute my idea; there was no time to hem and haw over the process.
But then other paintings can take months. I don’t necessarily churn out works quickly, but I do like to make marks and paint quickly. Sometimes I’ll start a painting and then set it aside for a few months to mull over before working on it again. I didn’t always do this, but I’ve seen that it is a vital part of the process.
GD: When you work on paintings or collages at the same time, do they wind up looking similar?
AHB: Yes, because I use the same palette on each one so the colors are fairly consistent in each painting. When I paint, I paint whatever I’m thinking about. It’s very stream of consciousness so the works come from the same head space which makes them thematically similar by default.
GD: Do you think this show has an overall theme?
AHB: I didn’t have a theme in mind at the start so it’s hard for me stand back now and say, “Oh, this is the theme.” I’ve always worked with portraiture so formally these paintings are about trying to evolve from simply rendering faces on a canvas. I thought a lot about formal elements as I painted and also about how to incorporate collage elements into the paintings, while maintaining a level of refinement. Ideas about my family and relationships on all levels will always be a part of my work and I believe that shows here as well.
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Come visit Amy’s show Red and Grey Paintings along with John Reuss’ Mind & Matter and Marcia Wolfson Ray’s Rhythms on view in Hillyer until February 25.

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