Jennifer, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Torn between pragmatism and a desire to become an artist, just before high school I found the perfect solution. And by age seventeen I was a licensed hairstylist working in a salon. I used this career to fund college calling myself an art minor while deciding on a major. When passion finally overtook practicality, I majored in art starting at Brookhaven College, then transferred to Southern Methodist University to complete my BFA with an emphasis in ceramics.
Art only made sense to me once I took my first 3-D foundations class and clay became the medium I needed to work with. Even with a degree, I felt I had only scratched the surface of learning this material and went on to the University of Florida for a post-bacc year of study to develop my portfolio. Next, I was accepted to Utah State University which has a thriving ceramics program that included several workshops with international artists.
After earning an MFA, I was awarded a year-long residency at Chester Springs Studio in Pennsylvania. I later received a teaching opportunity in Oregon at Portland Community College. The only thing that tore me away from such a fantastic city was the chance to live on Kauai (Hawaii) when my husband was recruited for a teaching job. Living there influenced my work greatly, having long been inspired by land flora and sea life.
After several years we moved to Austin to be closer to family. Today, I work as an independent studio artist and teach at both The Art School at Laguna Gloria via the Contemporary Austin as well as the Dougherty Arts Center. I exhibit my work in galleries and selected clay related festivals.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I have yet to meet anyone who has lived a while who hasn’t struggled in life, so I’d stay challenges are a given. With that in mind, we might as well choose the most interesting life we can handle and be willing to work from there. The most obvious struggle has been financial, as artwork only pays the artist once it is sold yet there is so much time and energy invested long before any hint of reward. Fortunately, the one known reward is the making process itself so every day I get in the studio is a start in the right direction.
As an exhibiting artist, I work in studio as much as possible to prepare for upcoming shows but also because the actual hands-on work is what makes this medium so interesting and fulfilling. My building process in clay is a bit different than many viewers and even other ceramics artists expect. Usually people assume that I start with a vessel then add texture to it. But instead I build each layer with small, textured pieces of soft clay bit by bit, layer by layer. They are pinched and blended together on the interior one level at a time in the tradition of coil building. The result is a form which “grows” into its shape, reflecting the manner in which plant and sea life generate their structures.
Rather than a literal interpretation, each sculpture is a blending of images re-imagined into a form of its own. I may see an interesting sea worm and spiky desert flower years apart, then one day they combine and emerge into a new sculpture in the studio. My purpose is to recognize the relationships of living systems despite their distance or seeming irrelevance to one another.
I like sharing my making process to give better insight to how my work develops, but my hope is always to have people see it live and in person. I exhibit regularly in gallery shows and a couple of clay related events. At the moment I’m preparing for a month-long solo exhibition in an Austin gallery happening this February. I love having the opportunity to meet people at openings and answer questions about the work. It also gives me the chance to glean great titles from comments I overhear!
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
Success to me is the ability to wake up daily filled with more ideas than I’ll ever have time to sort through, managing to work on some of those ideas, and eventually seeing a select few of them to fruition.
Contact Info:
- Website: jenniferhillceramics.
com - Instagram: @
jenniferhillceramics
Image Credit:
Jennifer Hill; Teresa Rafidi
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