Alison Hiltner Lecture (February 22, 2022)
Wowza. What a week at art boot camp. Joseph Norman, my undergraduate drawing professor, would always encourage us to exhaust yourself chasing your dreams and basically explained that in order to make your dreams a reality, you need to go to bed EVERY night completely exhausted exercising your talents. And every night, when I crawl into bed around 11:30. I am most always sore and drained from making, talking, dancing, teaching, and listening all day erryyyyday. I love alllllllll it allllll. I never want to leave sometimes.
Anywho, this past Wednesday we had visiting artist for our MFA Lecture series..... Alison Hiltner.
Hilter received her BFA from Kansas and her MFA from University of Minnesota, home to the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices.
Listening to her was totally engaging, inspiring, and hilarious. Not only did she show us plenty of images of her work, process, installs, and processes..... but she totally unlocked a few memories in my subconscious (will expand on this later... maybe)
Her work boiled down seems to take an ordinary object and turn it into an entire fantasy world. A cotton swab with earwax turns into a weird etherial forest, cultivating life from earwax. Through anthropomorphic, interactive installations, Hiltner uses materials like hot flue, rubber bands, and balloons to create choreographed sculptures and time based media.
She pulls inspiration from the natural world, referencing media like The Secret Life of Plants and Planet Earth.... Personifying flowers, and exploring curiosity in the natural world with her own personal flaiiiiir.
"I want people to experience that intense pulsation that makes every living creature alive"
She went on for an hour and I wrote everything down, sweet tea, coffee, and prozac pumping through my blood I was fixated since I had been up for 48 hours listening to this lecture (its midterm Szn okay)..... but essentially she proposes the question.
"How do I bring my crazy mind to life?" she asks.
How do we make the world we want to exist a reality. She said she's inspired by things that are real, that are other world from the deep sea. How does one create a playground to invite people into to wonder? this was absolutely crazyyyy for me and unlocked a whole new memory. When I was younger I was also was obsessed with sea creatures, specifically the Loch Ness monster.... which you can read about here, in the website I create for him when I was in elementary school. I consider this a an archival piece of art from my subconscious.
She closed by acknowledging that collaborating with others and listening to how differently people see the world is mind bending.
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After listening to Hiltner talk for about an hour, I had laughed plenty and seen about a hundred slides of her story and work. It was lovely and engaging.
Sophia Hatzikos , a colleague and friend of mine, acknowledged Hiltner's refreshing spirit by asking about her emotional experience with the process.
Hilter admitted that besides the 10% of excitement, inspiration, and energy you have at the beginning of a project, and the 10% of satisfaction at the end of making a piece, its pretty much a brutal, chaotic process. Things go awry and there are lots of tears, this was totally reassuring and inspiring to hear.... as I was crying earlier this week in the bathroom over the stressful amount of paper machie I have assigned to myself for the semester.
Thats THE TEA, I enjoyed getting to know #AllisonHiltner and seeing her work.
Until next time space blog!
Sarah Moon (www.moonart.co)
