David Hilliard To Open Photography Show February 9
Visting Artist’s Exhibition ‘Highway of Thought’ in Currey Gallery through March 2
Photographer David Hilliard, whose colorful, multi-paneled images balance autobiography and fiction, will speak at Watkins College of Art, Design & Film on Thursday, February 9, to open the 2012 Watkins Visiting Artist’s Exhibition, Highway of Thought.
Hilliard’s remarks will begin at 5:15 p.m. in the Watkins Theater, followed by a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Highway of Thought, which includes nearly a dozen of Hilliard’s large-format photographs, will be on display in the Brownlee O. Currey, Jr. Gallery through March 2. The exhibition is mounted in conjunction with the Watkins Visiting Artists Series, which brings distinguished artists to campus and to the community.
All events are free and the public is invited
Currently an assistant professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and visiting faculty at Harvard University, Hilliard holds an MFA from Yale University and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2001. For nearly two decades he has been actively documenting his life and the lives of those around him, recording events and attempting to create order in a sometimes chaotic world.
“David’s images always involve human relationships and are often autobiographical, exploring masculine identity and desire,” says Professor Robin Paris, chair of the Watkins photography department. “Much of his images tell stories of ways that men are led to imagine themselves–affectionately together or in conflict, as father and son or in solitude. The expansive, segmented images have much in common with theater or painting, but he does little in the way of constructing the imagery. Rather than building sets, he finds the scene or sets it up as it exists; perhaps moving around a few things, but his interest is in the real event, the place and people, with real moments of recognition.
“When you are looking at David’s images, you are aware of how the image moves, and how you are moved. When you leave his images, you are transposed. The lush, colorful, panoramic and segmented works examine various terrains of human relationships hoping that, by looking, we will think about our own lives and relationships.”
(Image: Boys Tethered, 2008)
About the Artist
David Hilliard creates large-scale, multi-paneled color photographs, often based on his life or the lives of people around him. His panoramas direct the viewer’s gaze across the image surface allowing narrative, time and space to unfold. Hilliard received his BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art in 1992 and MFA from Yale University in 1994. He worked for many years as an assistant professor at Yale University where he directed the undergraduate photography department. He has also taught at Harvard University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and spent the spring of 2010 at Dartmouth College as their artist in residence. He is presently an assistant professor in Boston at the Massachusetts College of Art and visiting faculty at Harvard.
Hilliard exhibits his photographs both nationally and internationally and has won numerous awards, such as the Fulbright and Guggenheim. His photographs can be found in many important collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His work is represented by the Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York, Carroll and Sons Gallery in Boston, Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta, the Mark Moore Gallery in Santa Monica and in Paris at La Galerie Particuliere. In 2005 a collection of his photographs was published in a monograph by Aperture Press. For more information, visit www.DavidHilliard.com
The Watkins Visiting Artists Series is an annual year-long program which welcomes nationally and internationally recognized fine artists, designers, filmmakers, educators and critics to the campus and the community. Through the generous support of the Memorial Foundation, this year’s series expands last year’s 125th anniversary series of three lectures by presenting four lectures in the Watkins Theater plus an exhibition in the Brownlee O. Currey, Jr. Gallery.
The series kicked off in November with Mexican printmaker Artemio Rodriguez, followed by filmmaker Natalia Almada on January 26. Remaining events are:
- March 29 – Harrell Fletcher, interdisciplinary artist
- April 26 – Alec Soth, photographer
Schedule for both events includes a reception at 6 p.m., and lecture at 6:30 p.m.
Updates to programming for each artist’s visit will be posted to the Watkins website: Watkins.edu/VisitingArtistsSeries.
Watkins is located at 2298 Rosa L. Parks Boulevard in MetroCenter; free parking is available in the campus lot. For more information, visit Watkins.edu or call 615-383-4848.
The Watkins Visiting Artists Series is made possible through a grant from the Memorial Foundation and is sponsored in part by Marché Artisan Foods.