Indiana Hill
Ecologist (N.) a person who studies relationships between living things and their environment and the balances between these relationships; The Greek origin of ecology comes from the word okios meaning “house,” ecologists study the world like it’s a big house and all living organisms are roommates. The definitions of an ecologist inform the role I take on as an artist making observations about the world around me in terms of connections, relationships and impact that mankind and nature produce.
I grew up in Utah Valley surrounded by dry heat, desaturated earth, sparse plants; black and white winters. My love for landscape was fostered in the open spaces surrounded by mountains. Visiting family in California was a long dessert drive that cascaded into palm trees, washed up seaweed and birds of paradise. Exotic plants that took on new colors; a surreal look that inspired my art to take on unlikely combinations.
Across the whole continent, in Delaware, lived other relatives. Getting lost in Grandad’s forest of a backyard was exhilarating, plants were bursting from their seams. Thick foliage, humid green, vines and a shallow depth to the landscape- not being able to see past the tightly interwoven viridian thicket. I enjoy using this shallow depth in my artwork, a small room of an ecosystem for eyes to explore.
I took a gapyear with Youth with a Mission (YWAM), Marriage of the Arts where I was trained in Nuremburg, Germany and Ethiopia, Africa to use art as a way of connecting to communities with a different culture and language.. During this experience my beliefs were further cemented that my art was not to be used selfishly, but to connect with and to move others. Imagery became a powerful tool- a mural of the jungle on the playground walls of a deaf school that spoke of mystery and exploration. A portrait for an 80 year old woman of the Kara tribe who had never seen her image in a mirror.
Arts became solidified in my mind after those experiences as a lifelong pursuit and the luscious greens of my childhood visits became home to me as I graduated from Delaware College of Art and Design.
After DCAD, I started teaching Art at a K-8 school in New Jersey. My personal work began to transform, ideas born from the moments just before I drift away to sleep, as my mind bobbles between the tv and a thought or the doodle that subconsciously pours onto my paper as I listen to a sermon. These mindless moments are fueled by the plants, earth and colors of my experiences.
