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ALISON HILDRETH High Street Gallery
ALISON HILDRETH Congress Street Gallery Please click images above for full view.
Alison Hildreth has exhibited consistently since the mid 1970s and her work is held in the permanent collections of numerous museums and institutions including:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY,
New York Public Library, New York, NY, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME,
Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME, Bates College Museum, Lewiston, ME,
Farnsworth Museum, Rockland, ME, Elizabeth Noyce Collection, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME, Walker Museum, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME,
Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, Smith College, North Hampton, MA
Boston Public Library, Boston, MA, DE Young Museum, San Francisco, CA.
During February and March 2011 Alison Hildreth is represented in three separate Portland art venues: two solo exhibits,
"The Feathered Hand" at the University of New England and "Early Work" at June Fitzpatrick Gallery at MECA, plus a group show
"Visual Poetry" at the Portland Public Library.
The theme of connectedness, an imprint we carry from generation to generation, also holds within it fears of disconnection, remarked upon by many current writers and poets, i.e., Octavio Paz: "The path the ancients cleared has closed."; Margaret Atwood: "The soft, dark languages are being silenced." The language that is eating the others is now our new digital voice. These concerns and cross currents are reflected in my work. I use many images as metaphors, some of which are vessels or containers which are wrapped, confined, at times overflowing with fluids that spill out.
What the critics say:
"...With her works now on view in three shows, Hildreth has easily made the case she is an important Maine artist. Whether you have a
literary take on the world or the swirling imagination of a child, she has something in store for you..." Daniel Kany - Maine Sunday Telegram
University of New England: "...Alison Hildreth has one of the finest literary imaginations of any artist I know. Her deeply personal,
intuitive paintings, prints, drawings, and installations are often
informed by her readings of visionary writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, and W.G. Sebald. So it does not surprise me that
The Feathered Hand, Hildreth's wondrous exhibition at the University of New England Art Gallery in Portland takes its title from a poem by
Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert entitled "Chosen By The Stars"...'An important part of being human,'
Alison told me a few years ago, 'is that our reach exceeds our grasp. We fly. We know we may crash, but we do it anyway'.
With The Feathered Hand one of Maine's most serious and accomplished artists takes off and takes the viewer with her.
Absolutely not to be missed..." Edgar Beem - Yankee Magazine.
June Fitzpatrick Gallery at meca: '...Showing concurrently at June Fitzpatrick are earlier paintings by Hildreth
and it's particularly interesting reading backwards from the context of her newest work. Most of the paintings exude a searching but appealing spiritual mood.
Some are landscapes with spiritual paths, others float towards abstract ether, and yet others distill themselves around totemic visions... It's a strong show
...Daniel Kany - Maine Sunday Telegram
Portland Public Library: "...Hildreth has only one painting in "Visual Poetry" at the Portland Public Library ("Word Warriors"),
but its scale, ambition and agonizingly writhing power put it in a class beyond its neighbors from some of Portland's best galleries..."
Daniel Kany - Maine Sunday Telegram
Maine Sunday Telegram review by Daniel Kany (excerpt)
"...earlier paintings by Hildreth is a strong show"
Most of the paintings exude a searching but appealing spiritual mood. Some are landscapes with spiritual paths, others float towards abstract ether, and yet others distill themselves around totemic visions.
Two of the largest works -- canvases from about 2001 -- are the clear precursors to "Feathered Hand." These hint of a darker, moral reading of the large installation.
"Freefall" features the doubled figure of Phaeton from a famous print by Hendrick Goltius (1558-1667). Phaeton's story is parallel to Icarus': despite insistent warnings, Phaeton flew his father Helios' sun chariot and was killed.
In Hildreth's canvas, the Phaeton figures, along with chariot wheels, have fallen through space across which 10 disembodied hands (in legible yoga mudra gestures) hold drooping lines of text. Also hanging are repeating images of a votive statue peeking from the hexagonal forms' honeycomb grid. The surface is varied and rich with oil paint, varnish and the collaged images and text. Her specific (but obscure) references make this work far more pained and impenetrably dense than her more recent pictures.
My favorite works are Hildreth's new "Imperium" series. These are woodcuts in which the artist varies many of the basic forms from the drawings: bulwarked fortresses, redoubts, lost catacombs and old foundations, stacked over each other. The compositions are built of subtle layers: black over gray over cream, lighter gray on parchment maybe with one punctuating bolt of red.
That the forms in the "Imperium" prints repeat only makes them more interesting. They could be different moments in history or alternate outcomes. These are very handsome and refined, and it is their confidence that takes them past Hildreth's other works for me.
...Hildreth has easily made the case she is an important Maine artist. Whether you have a literary take on the world or the swirling imagination of a child, she has something in store for you.
Excerpted Maine Sunday Telegram review by Philip Isaacson
HILDRETH PROVOCATIVE, AS EVER
Alison Hildreth's "Forthrights and Meanders" at June Fitzpatrick MECA provokes a search for the artist's inner thoughts. This is not unusual for work shown at that gallery.
"Provoke" is the right word. There is always a narrative behind Hildreth's work; there's a story that one feels he should be able to identify and could do so if only one had read more deeply, thought more deeply or somehow was more sensitive. One senses that there are literary allusions in the ink-and-wash drawings in this show and, indeed, I have been told that its title is borrowed from "The Tempest."
The work has an ephemeral quality, as though the artist did not intend it to have a long life. It suggests itself as notations or thoughts committed to long sheets of fragile Japanese paper that are offered as elemental guides for our own journeys and once understood could be discarded.
If asked to, I could find old fortifications, the routes of rivers and excavated cities in my meanderings among the drawings. I could also find reports on astronomy, botany and creatures that exist in the sea. I suspect, however, that Hildreth expects more of me.
Alison Hildreth resume
High Street Gallery
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