Passages Workshop

Working from personal history and ancestry, students created individual mixed media pieces. Some dealt with family legacy, the passing of a loved one and the relationship between mother and daughter.

It was nice to spend time making art with people even though we were 6ft. apart and wearing masks for two days! 

Passages

Two years in the making or should I say 37? That's how long I've been writing letters. Journaling since the age of 12. Passages is a project that developed from an idea my best friend and I had back in the early 1990's of doing an art project together with our correspondence.

At age 53, after the Santa Rosa fires, I felt a need to create works of art that incorporated boxes of  ephemera I'd been collecting for so many years. As I re-read letters some 20 or 30 years after receiving them, I was flooded with memories and images, yet they seemed to belong to someone else. I felt removed, as if I were exploring the life of another person.

As a young woman, I felt so different than everyone else around me. As I grow older, I see how all of our lives are so universal. We experience so many of the same thoughts and feelings. I had envisioned, "Passages" to be shown in the month of May and June when my students graduate from high school. I wanted them to reflect on the stage they are at and the passages they are embarking on. Though I have used personal items to create the works of art in the show, this exhibit is not about my past but about a universal past.

First feelings of desire, longing, love, the physical pain of a broken heart. All of the insecurities about fitting in, about career and finding oneself. The search for happiness and belonging. Observations about people and places. Books read, movies watched, experiences.

I hope that some people will be able to visit the actual exhibit and experience the artwork in person during this pandemic. A soundscape of music and voices will accompany the exhibit if there is an opening. Every abstract work of art is layered with years of stories which cannot be captured in a video.

As you take this virtual tour, I hope you get a sense of your own passage through life.

Here is a book of the exhibit.

Passages

By Hillary Younglove

Passages

By Hillary Younglove

Don't Throw Out Anything! It Can All Be Recycled.

Samurai Revisited, 24x24, 2020

Over the past few years I've been taking paintings that are collecting dust in my garage and giving them new life. They add a rich layer to my new work. Instead of destroying pieces I don't like, I sand them down or use them as a base layer for a new work of art. I love knowing that there is a history or back story to each piece that only I know about. This particular painting was once a samurai. I kept the color palette and added pages from a 19th century Japanese book on Kabuki theater along with fabric and new painted elements.

Passages

Tête-à-Tête

                   Mixed Media, 24x30, 2019

It's been a long time since I last posted because I've been posting all my new work on Instagram. For the last two summers I've been working on a series entitled, "Passages". This series uses old letters, journal entries, photos and encaustic. I used to treasure all of the items used in my new body of work. Today I see everything as ephemeral. As a young artist I would never have felt the urge to share or use these personal items in a work of art, let alone do an entire project on the subject of the passages of my life. Today I feel so detached from it all. The person who wrote the letters and journal entries was a much younger Hillary. I used to see myself as such an individual, now I see that I am just like everyone else with the same hopes, desires and fears. 

Synapse

Mixed Media on board, 18x24, 2018

For 30 years my best friend and I talked about doing an art project with our correspondence. In the summer of 2018 the timing felt right. The boxes of letters had survived the Santa Rosa fires which had come within a seven minute walk from my house. Some of my paintings burned with the homes that were lost. The gallery I was showing all of my latest work in came within a block of burning down. Awareness of how close I had come to losing everything, as some of my friends and students, had made me want to use the letters and journals that had traversed the Atlantic and US several times over in my artwork. I spent the summer re-reading things I had not perused since I had written or received them. Memories flooded back but with a new perspective of someone who had seen years of patterns, someone who had a detachment from the initial pain and excitement that was originally expressed or received.

It feels life-affirming to work with this raw material. To let go of the boxes of ephemera and recycle them. It's a transformative project which I feel will lead me in a new direction. Elements of painting, drawing, puppetry, photography and sound, all art forms I embrace are encompassed in this project.

Radio-Coteau Event

"Phantasme" in the background

 A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of displaying some new and old work at a wine event at Radio Coteau. It was fun seeing the work in a new setting. The wine was excellent!

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Hillary Younglove- Fulton X Gallery Exhibit

With my talented studio art class.

Despite almost losing everything in the fires, the gallery and my home were miraculously spared. The fire reached within blocks. Even though it was closed a few weeks after the fires, a few pieces manged to sell!

Fresco Workshop

Last weekend I taught a two - day intensive, private fresco workshop. It was so much fun working with adults again. This fall I'll be teaching my semester long class, Lost Techniques of the Ancients.

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