(Image: Detail of "Forthright #15)

After graduating from Vassar College with a B.A. in Art History, Alison Hildreth worked in New York and went to night school at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Art. She married and moved to Maine with her four children. When her youngest child was in school, she continued her studies in Studio Art graduating from the Maine College of Art in 1976. Since that time, she has had several studios in Portland, and is now at the Bakery Studios at 61 Pleasant Street. Alison's practice includes mixed media drawing, painting, printmaking, and some installation work.

When did you first realize that you were going to be an artist and when did you first start making art?
Like most children, I liked assembling structures from sticks, moss, lichen, toadstools. I found an old mahjong set in the attic and built things scrambled with chess and checkers. I made illustrated books and drew on every available surface. Art was a language for me and it was really not until I graduated from art school that seemed that I was going to be an artist.

Who or what inspires you?
Well, everything influences me; what I see, what I hear and particularly what I read. To me, what influences one is eclectic; how an egg breaks a frying pan, microscopic and macroscopic images.

I think that words are like lines, you build and you take away. W.G Sebald’s written work is a big influence. His work lies in the intersection of dream, history, journaling and fiction. Sebald manages to weave these together and make connections. I aspire, with different tools, to achieve this in my work.

Is (was) anyone else in your family in the arts?
My sister was a poet. Mother painted. My son Tom is actor and writer. My son Hasket built and designed boats.

Are you self-trained or did you go to art school?
I made art long before I went and had formal training.

Is the process of creating your art long or short?
Endless.

Do you have a subject matter that defines you as an artist?
I would say that my subject matter is really like a journal of where I am or what I am interested in at a given time. I explore a given subject matter until suddenly I know that I have exhausted it and then, I move on to the next body of work.

What makes you stay with a particular subject matter? Why are you drawn to it?
I find, suddenly something just grips you. For example, bats. I was living in a house with bats in the attic, and I realized how compelling they were. Their formations and flights were not like flocking birds, but chaotic. I worked with bats as an abstract and realistic subject. They inhabit the liminal world between dust and dawn, have been demonized in western culture yet are integral to life. Watching the bats catch bugs on the water was like watching a beautifully choreographed ballet.

I worked with bats as subject matter until I felt it no longer obsessed me. I worked on it until I had finished saying what I wanted to say on the subject. That is generally how I work.

How do you stay motivated?
That has never been a problem.

(Image: "Forthright #23)

What have you been working on lately? Are you experimenting with anything new?
Lately, I have been experimenting with drawing. My recent drawings are a confluence of varying influences: fortification, insects swarming, geography. They are mindscapes, microscopic and macroscopic at the same time. I want to make connections between varying ideas and drawing is a very freeing way to do this. Drawings have the ability to travel rather randomly from idea to idea.

Has your medium changed from when you first started out?
When I first started, I was painting primarily. Then I became interested in printmaking. I periodically do installation work. Drawing has always been a medium I constantly go back to. Drawing often leads to discoveries that can be translated into painting or printmaking.

What advice would you give to an artist just starting out?
Trust your own process. I returned to my studio once a long time ago and found a note that said: painting solves painting— signed Mysterio.

What kind of comment pleases you the most when overheard at one of your openings?
I am always interested in what a viewer sees in the work and what they bring to it. Nobody sees things in the same way; everyone sees the world through a very personal lens. However a person responds interests me. I like when someone brings their own experience to my work.

How have you handled the business side of being an artist?
Badly.

Do you have any outside interests other than art?
I have a lot of interests outside of my studio that I find compelling. I don’t feel as though these pursuits detract from my studio practice. Everything feeds your art. Art does not exist in a vacuum. There is a world outside my studio that I am interested in participating in, and that I don’t see as exclusive to the work I do in my studio.

Are you disciplined about your creative process (in other words, do you treat the process like a job, where you keep particular hours in the studio), or are you more spontaneous?
Studio hours aren’t the driving force in creativity or making art for me. I feel as though many of the ideas that I have become excited occur outside the studio, whether reading, walking, daydreaming or thinking. Although I am very happy being in the studio, the work doesn’t begin and end in my studio.

How would your life change if you were no longer allowed to create art?
That’s rather unimaginable. If you’re a creator, you never stop creating. You can’t shut it out of your mind. That just doesn’t happen.

What's the best part of being a full time, working artist?
The best part is the engagement and the excitement of being in the work.

What's the worst part of being a full time, working artist?
The worst part is when you get into an adversarial relationship with your work. Your bad paintings are your own worst enemies.

Do you have any upcoming shows?
I am currently in group shows at the LC Bates Museum, University of New England and the New Era Gallery on Vinalhaven Island. A show this September at the Atrium Art Gallery. I have solo show coming up at the University of New England in a little over a year.

Where can we find your work?
I show at the June Fitzpatrick Gallery in Portland. For a list of other venues you can go to my website.

- Brenda Bonneville, editor

Copyright © 2009 MAINE ART SCENE - Maine Arts & Culture Online Magazine.

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