23 June 2008
Hillary Steel
(The following article is taken from the U.S. Department of State publication, Art on the Edge: 17 Contemporary American Artists.)
"Like any of the communicative arts, textiles reflect aesthetic principles – balance, symmetry, movement, rhythm – which are also common to music and language. Like all cultural expressions, cloth embodies a complex creative process as well as the culmination of generations of dyeing and weaving practices. Consequently, its very structure, in addition to the imagery and color of its surface design, offers a multitude of messages, metaphor and history to its viewer. I have been greatly influenced by these textile traditions, and specifically by the resist dye processes of Asia, the Americas, and Western Africa."
[Hillary Steel (b. 1959, New York, New York) attended The State University of New York at Buffalo (BA 1980). Since graduation, she has continued her study of textiles through both post-baccalaureate coursework at SUNY, Buffalo (1980-1981 and 1986-1988), and travels to Cote d'Ivoire with Drew University, Madison, New Jersey (1992), and to Peru and Chile (1999). She also studied teaching at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore (MA 1997). Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Glenview Mansion Art Gallery, Rockville, Maryland (2002, 1999); Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts, New Castle, Pennsylvania (1995); the Rosewood Centre Arts Gallery, Kettering, Ohio; and has been shown in numerous group exhibitions in such venues as the Artists' Museum, Washington, D.C. (2003), and Snyderman/Works Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2002, 2001, 2000). Her work is also held by several public collections including that of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.]
