Today we’d like to introduce you to Janet Loren Hill.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I grew up in the small valley town of Walla Walla, Washington surrounded by the Blue Mountains. I remember riding in the back of my parent’s car starring out the window and wondering if we drove far enough would we reach the edge of mountains and just find an elaborately painted theater backdrop; a massive painting of these stunning rolling hills. Maybe that’s where it all started. Where I realized fantasy, reality and representation could click together to create romance.
When I was very young my father was an antique dealer in Seattle, so daycare for me was wandering the aisles of furniture and hearing the stories and history behind each piece. Antiques Roadshow was frequently on in our house so I think I started to understand from a young age that the culture, philosophy and dogma of a people could manifest in the objects they populated their homes with.
In first grade, I met my life-partner, Jordan, we were not friends until middle school, but I do remember coming back to class early after recess one day and seeing him upset, because he had accidentally gone home thinking it was the end of the school day. Then one year he came back from summer vacation about 4 feet taller and chiseled; the rest is history. We grew up next to and eventually through one another. In many ways I forget that each of us has our own seams and edges, in a weird way, I think together we sometimes reach something beyond individual personhood. I’m interested in the vulnerability of that.
During my 2nd year of graduate school, the 2016 election occurred and I think it shook most of us. I think many artists came back to the white walls of their studios and thought, what am I doing, how do I understand making objects in this reality. It was a “come-to-Jesus” moment for me. Up until that point I had really been mining my personal experiences and contained them there. After the 2016 election, I begin to see how from this hyper-focused pinpointed light I could address larger cultural and societal observations I had always considered. At that moment, my artist voice got a lot bolder and unbridled. I feel the urgency now. I’ve become disillusioned with the “constant march towards progress” and I see how the fall back can be sudden and powerful. It has shifted how I interpret representation, desire and romanization. I can see their luridness more clearly now.
Please tell us about your art.
Coming from a background of painting and drawing, I make installations, sculptures, videos, and portraits that are saturated in the language of painting. I think about how a color’s location throughout an installation can create and flatten perceived space and invite the viewer into a timed navigation of the installation in a cinematographic way. Mining my experience of navigating a fluid identity throughout a long-term partnership with my husband that began when we were fifteen, I flip traditional gender roles in portraiture. I invite the audience into vulnerable moments in my marriage, providing an empowered female voice that questions; asking where societal expectations and identity construction dangerously collide and what it means to exist as a person only ever evolving through another. I purposefully use textile techniques for their use by female activist groups, their embodiment of domestic memories, and metaphorical manifestation of two threads/reeds/grids entangled together to make a whole. Projecting fantasies and fever dreams onto mundane domestic situations, I complicate the perceived ideal of how a life should be organized. Saturated in the uncanny, furniture and figure seem to disorient one another prompting the viewer to reconsider what was once overlooked.
In the series, “I think I married the back of your head, at least it treats me well,” I consider those passive and dissociated moments in my relationship when my mind is allowed to wander. Without previous real partners to compare to, Jordan is cast into revealing and sometimes problematic fantastical roles drawn from movies, imaginings and characters encountered throughout the routine of life. Sensuous paint, rounded protruding surfaces that just don’t seem to fit together perfectly and humorous yarn that mimics familiar objects all act as motifs to an ongoing lived experience.
What do you think is the biggest challenge facing artists today?
I think as we see the arts becoming less and less valued in education and the populous looking towards the entertainment industry to fill this gap, makers have to consider how they are contributing to this spectacle culture. I think it’s dangerous that our future generations are increasing becoming visually illiterate and are unable to decipher the true intentions and meaning behind the thousands of images they are bombarded with each day. Artists can be the leaders in asserting the power of asking questions instead of reiterating someone else’s answers.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
I have a couple projects in the works right now, but they are not finalized so I can’t share them just yet. But, keep an eye out on my Instagram (http://instagram.com/janetlorenhill) for updates on new work, exhibitions and collaborations.
Being an installation artist, it can be difficult to support your practice, but I do make small portraits and color studies that are available for purchase. So, if you find my installations intriguing, please reach out to me and we can talk about recreating a piece of the installation for your collection or consider investing in my practice through a purchase of a smaller portrait or drawing. Most important of all, don’t hesitate to reach out and let me know how you are connecting to the work, that connection is the reason I make.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.janetlorenhill.com
- Email: janetlorenhill@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janetlorenhill/
Image Credit:
Janet Loren Hill
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