WILLIAM T. HILLMAN - GIVERNY
Dates: October 28 – December 4
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 28, 6–8 pm

Marcel Sitcoske Gallery presents the Giverny series by photographer William T. Hillman. This is his first exhibition on the West Coast.

For his Giverny series, William T. Hillman has taken his inspiration from Claude Monet’s images of waterlilies, painted at his garden at Giverny. Using his camera, Hillman has captured the essence of the gardens as well as Monet’s paintings while extending his exploration of light, color and form. The images range from being almost completely abstract to being wholly recognizable. Throughout the series, however, the key elements of Giverny are present: flowers, leaves, water, light.

The works in this series were all shot at the Giverny gardens using a 2 _ format Hasselblad camera and a cheap, plastic Holga camera on color transparency film. The film was then cross-processed using chemicals and processes designed for negative film. These negatives were then printed as transparencies on archival cibachrome paper. It is this experimental process which gives these works their extraordinarily brilliant yet otherworldly color. Hillman also used double and multiple exposures in over half the series as well as computer manipulation in eight of the images.

William Hillman has studied both visual art and art history at Princeton and Columbia, in addition to studying at the Art Student’s League in New York and the Lacoste School of the Arts in France. Originally trained as a painter, Hillman’s more recent work involves computer manipulated and enhanced photographs. Previous subjects of his work have included the Kuikuru Indians of Brazil, Buddhist temples and statues, Mount Ayers in Australia and other places of natural wonder or spiritual significance.

Last fall at Hillman’s New York solo show, Maria Morris Hambourg, curator of photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, acquired Far for their permanent collection. In addition to the Met, Hillman’s work resides in a number of important permanent collections including the Museum of the Southern Alleghenies and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.