RISE 2019: Hillyer Newly Selected Artists

RISE 2019: Hillyer Newly Selected Artists

Rise 2019: Hillyer Newly Selected Artists

February 1 – February 24, 2019

Hillyer is proud to present our newly selected artists for the 2019/2020 exhibition calendar. RISE 2019 includes work from Hillyer’s rising artists who were selected from our most recent annual open call for proposals, and who will be presenting solo exhibitions starting this April 2019 through March 2020.

Selected artists

Amarist (February 2020)

Marcel Artes Deolazo (May 2019)

Emily Campbell (March 2020)

Tessa Click (January 2020)

Clay Dunklin (October 2019)

Neil Forrest (January 2020)

Emily Fussner (August 2019)

Stephanie Garmey (Match 2020)

Noel Kassewitz (January 2020)

Zofie King (September 2019)

Christopher Kojzar (August 2019)

Suzy Kopf (February 2020)

Jubee Lee (October 2019)

Bryanna Millis (April 2019)

Tyra Mitchell (June 2019)

Bundith Phunsombatlert (October 2019)

Nancy Sausser (July 2019)

Madeline A. Stratton (July 2019)

Eric Uhlir (May 2019)

Heidi Zenisek (April 2019)

athillyer.org

Michael West

Conversation Piece

February 1 – February 24, 2019

A conversation piece is an 18th century term referring to portraits of family or society engaged in genteel conversation, usually staged in a domestic setting. More recently, the term refers to a unique object which arouses discussion.

“Conversation Piece” is a modern version of these concepts. The artist as examiner and confronter desires to initiate a new dialogue through his humorous and psychological influence. Although this gathering emphasizes the artist, his role could pertain to anyone who wishes to bring new things to the table. This leads to transformative discussions and experiences for those in the group who wish to participate.

Michael West was born in Rockville, CT. He received his BFA from The Corcoran College of Art and Design. For over 15 years, he and his wife, Tracey, have co-owned Studio West, a decorative painting and design company. While maintaining a successful small business, he continued to keep his eye on the art world. Through his trade, Michael has painted on multiple surfaces including walls, floors, ceilings, and furniture. Working in three dimensional environments has influenced his fine art by employing the use of common building and household materials such as boards, string, glass, plaster, and Styrofoam,leaving them in their raw or muted states, or completely transforming them. Michael’s work explores movement and location . . . combinations of fixed and fluid elements activate experiences within each work. His sculptures are places to mentally land upon, get caught within, or to take off from.

www.michaeldavidwest.com

Lindsay Hall

Luscious and Pluscious

February 1 – February 24, 2019

“Luscious and Pluscious” addresses pleasure, desire and intimacy in relation to fantasy playscapes of the body and beyond. The body is the vehicle for all human experience and sensory engagement and so it becomes an origin of inspiration for shapes, textures and interactions of forms in this indulgent wonderland. Beautiful, strange and sensuous bodily imagery are oversimplified as abstract forms; a shoulder or a penis becomes a wonky noodle, while a vagina or a mouth becomes an asymmetrical donut. Sexually ambiguous body parts constructed of dyed polyester, elastic mesh, shiny polyurethane and paint become representative of a universal body. Stuffed and stretched pieces and parts act as a framework for individual experience, inviting opportunities for recollection of simultaneously salacious moments and awkward discoveries. Fragments of sweet, supple flesh hang in animated suspension and sit in lavish arrangements, provocatively posturing and begging for interaction. Bumping and hugging, slumped and slouched and snuggled, bulging and swelling and gently cupping edges, causing curves to flirt with crevices as shapes slip and slide in, through, around and over one another. Bodily pleasures such as food are simultaneously and overtly inserted into the work as another source of inspiration, layering spongy flesh with gooey, sticky-sweet intimations. Sugar crystals cling to the memory membrane as suggestions of doughy flesh and fluffy confections stuffed into fiber casings and depicted in glitter-crusted paintings saturate the visual field. A tingling sensation is brought on by remembrances sugarcoated with the curiosity of childhood. Moments of candy collecting, marshmallow hoarding and gummy sucking leave a tacky smack of sweater teeth and precious residue on an overly stimulated brain. Squishy toys inspire shapes, textures and colors as youthful amusements play back in fluid rotations, evoking candy shops and toy stores overflowing with piles of goodies, generous puddles of neon slime, the gyration of pearlescent water wigglies and Saturday mornings filled with Candy Land, My Little Pony and Popples. Plush forms bounce and collide in an invisible yet seemingly viscous fluid backlit with glowing gradations surrounded by a never-ending white field. Joyous and overwhelmed, clinging to plastic food and soft playthings, childish fancies mingle with carnal cravings.

Palpable memories of things innocent and erotic, tasty and visceral, are regurgitated and playfully reinterpreted through an intuitive process that results in each candy colored morsel. Glittery glue and Crayola paints combine with the smell of vinyl pool toys and translucent inflatable furniture, conjuring earlier days punctuated by the thrill of crafting followed by pool parties with cupcakes and ice cream. Rainbow colored tulle packed with iridescent cellophane mimic icing and gelatinous jigglies as after-school dance recitals resurface in dizzying proportions. Deliciously digestible sensuality and shameless humor are blended, whipped and drizzled over each juicy delicacy. Similar to the individual experience, each piece can be considered unique yet part of the collective whole, coalescing in this decadent fantasyscape brimming with delectable offerings. The alluring components and scenes are amalgamations of both the foreign and the familiar and can be interpreted as both micro and macro, internal and external, corporeal and temporary, tugging at the seams of dream like realities with spectacular immediacy.

A West Coast native, Lindsay Hall is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She received an MFA in Painting from Indiana University in 2016, as well as a BA in Painting and Drawing (2012) and a BA in Journalism and Media Studies (2010) from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her work has been exhibited nationally at venues such as the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the Janet Kurnatowski Gallery (New York), the New Hampshire Institute of Arts, Kent State University (Ohio), Indiana University, the Target Gallery (Virginia), Fort Works Art (Texas) and Ventolin Art Space (Australia), and is featured in Volume 38 of Studio Visit magazine and Issue 2 of Hiss Mag. She has co-curated group exhibitions in Indiana and New York. Lindsay received the Ilknur P. Ralston Memorial Award in Visual Arts in 2016. She was awarded the Post-Graduate Residency Program at the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, Virginia in 2017. Lindsay is currently preparing for a solo exhibition in Florence, Italy as a selected artist for the XII Florence Biennale in 2019.

www.lindsayahall.com

Danni O’Brien

Play Date

January 4 – January 27, 2019

“Play Date” explores childhood landscapes through camp, craft, and humor. The immersive set of candy colored, fuzztastic objects echo forms of both playground equipment and O’Brien’s memory of her own awkward, pubescent body. Plush “paintings” and skins emerge from the nostalgic and kitschy process of latch hook rug making. This technique is employed as a vehicle to grapple with notions of femininity, domesticity, and craft, as well as for its titillating and tactile physical qualities.  

The laborious latch hooking process results in robust, fibrous images containing imagery of personal, adolescent girlhood motifs and memories. Materials for the fibrous segments are sourced from collections of vintage wool on eBay and cheap plastic rope from the dollar store. This peculiar framework results in off kilter color schemes and animated textural shifts. Precise woodworking, haphazardly assembled ceramics, and found objects join the conversation to transform the plush skins into whimsical, dynamic forms. The assembled props in this mixed media landscape are meant to be evocative, cheeky, and invite touch and play.

O’Brien is a queer womyn maker and art educator currently based in Baltimore, Maryland. Her work is rooted in play, collecting, and constructing and informed by an education in assemblage sculpture, fiber arts, and ceramics. She marries construction and wood working skills with traditionally feminized and domesticated systems such as stitching, beading, and rug making to compose her dually hard and soft objects. Danni has recently been awarded artist residencies at PLOP (London, UK), The Maple Terrace (Brooklyn, NY), Art Farm (Marquette, NE) and Proyecto Ace (Buenos Aires, Argentina).
Her sculpture work has been shown at Little Berlin (Philadelphia, PA), Terrault (Baltimore, MD), Juicebox Gallery (Kansas City, MO) and published in Architectural Digest, ArtMaze, and Hiss Mag. She is currently preparing for an upcoming solo show with School 33 in Baltimore, MD.

www.danielleobrienart.com

Salvatore Pirrone

You and Me

January 4 – January 27, 2019

You and Me is an installation working with themes of memory, material and immaterial where I build a group of sculptures that simultaneously inhabit recollections from my childhood and proclivities of adulthood. Concrete, wood, acrylic and sawdust mirror my life as professional fabricator while hard candy, cone shapes and the color blue recall distinct imagery and delights from younger days. This work rests between the explicit and the indifferent, lyrical and direct, big and small, near and far, material and immaterial … ‘one day from my childhood stick out in my mind as different. I must have been six or seven years old when I began to chip away at the corner of my grandmother’s home with a pointed, metal rod. The tip of the rod was sharp and with each swing came the desire to do 10 more. I was a young, and for the first time I felt in control, I was the most powerful person in the world, full of purpose and ideas. With this tool in my hand, I could turn something into something new and different. I remember being so pleased that I could transform such a thing; it was my first conscious attempt to make sense of the world and my role in it. I was testing the relationship between my body, action and experience, and I had to engage a building material to do it.’

Salvatore Pirrone is an artist and educator living the DC metro area. His studio practice exists at the intersection of art and design, with a particular interest in themes of ‘Work’, ‘Play’, ‘Identity’, and ‘Domesticity.’ He worked in the architectural offices of Carl Abbott and Huff + Gooden Architects before launching his own studio practice, where he is engaged in a variety of projects ranging from custom furniture, residential design and fine art. Salvatore is an Assistant Professor of Interior Design at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. He holds a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Florida and a Master of Fine Art degree from parsons the New School for Design in New York. Since relocating to the Washington Metro Area in 2009, Salvatore has shown with Arlington Arts Center, Atlas Performing Arts Center, CulturalDC’s Mobile Art Gallery, Sandy Spring Museum, Transformer, Maryland Art Place and the Dittmar House at Marymount University.

www.salvatorepirrone.com