We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Hills Snyder. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Hills below.
Hills, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
Resilience, self-esteem, generosity, empathy…all the “where do you get your” questions that have been asked, I would give the same answer:
Most profoundly, from loss. People and animals that I have known, because there are plenty of them that are part of loss. The impact of people and animals that are in my life near and far can’t be measured. Art, poetry, music, psychoactive plants. I have learned the most from all of these, along with love and kindness.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I move between art, music, and writing. The model I like is the wagon wheel. My creative activity happens at the hub and connects to people by avenue of any spoke, whomever, wherever they are on the rim. I would say teaching and curating are also spokes.
Part of my studio is set up as a house concert, art exhibition, and poetry space, called kind of a small array, in Magdalena, New Mexico. Making spaces for other artists is a form of community building.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
If you’re a kid with a tendency to build things, you’re already there.
Music on the radio as it existed in the sixties was a way to get vital information.
Realizing that art I was making was unconscious parts of me asking conscious parts of me to shed light, bringing the darkness inside into awareness. By darkness I don’t mean “evil.” I mean lack of illumination, the opposite of self-knowledge.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
In the early seventies I read the New American Review, which came out three times a year. A conversation between John Barth and Joe David Bellamy in New American Review #15 titled Having It Both Ways had an effect. Frank Stella’s early sixties black paintings on raw canvas were already in the lexicon of my thinking, so Barth’s mention of Stella was pre-keyed when I read it. Paraphrasing: “If I were a painter in 1972, I would try to find some way to absorb all the historical reasons that produce Frank Stella, let’s say, and at the same time tell stories.”
What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?
A book I read when I was 18 — A Year from Monday by John Cage. Something to the effect that if you don’t know where to start, start anywhere. Combining that with ideas about economy of movement has been my strategy.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/hillssnyder
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/wolverton
Ridge and Furrow
adjoined American flags, 48 x 72 inches, 2003
Monochrome
confederate flag boiled in Sodium Hydrosulfite, 48 x 72 inches, 2020 – 24
Misery Repair Shoppe
anachronistic clothing, corporate Vitruvian Man drawing, winnowing shovel, chalk, text, 4 min looped audio, 8 x 8 x 16 feet, Silos on Sawyer, Houston, 2018
Book of the Dead
three chambers connected by lightless maze, 2000 sq. ft. Artpace, San Antonio, 2005
Close Knit
knitting machine patent pages, 45 rpm record and jacket, found chess piece, drawn shadow, Plexiglas with holes, text, 18 x 45 inches, 2015
Quaternary Helix
pencil on paper, 28 x 34 inches, 2023
Image Credits
Nate Cassie, Tere Garcia, James Hart, Todd Johnson, Ansen Seale
