Jeanine Hill

Each piece that I make is a recorded examination of the terrain I have followed.  The lines I make with a pen, the marks in clay, and the words I choose to use are all influenced and driven by the personal.  It is through this work that I have come to define and redefine who I am as an artist and as a human being.

Within my most current body of work I utilize the memory that clay lends to the building of objects that then become records of action. Through the creation of form and the fluency that drawn line is able to bring to a surface I am able to articulate my experiences. These experiences transform into relics of visually constructed memory. As we experience the world, we gradually create narrative memory palaces in our minds. Small fragments created and combined to produce a narrative that is our own.

The works that I am currently making are three-dimensional maps of the literal and metaphoric terrains that I have traveled.  Within my work, form stands with purpose and content lies within the context of my life experiences.  It is through the examination of personal history and the construction and reconstruction of this history’s landscape that I am able to decipher my own mysteries through the morphology of clay.

-- Jeanine Hill

Jeanine Hill was born in Alcalde, New Mexico on a Pueblo Reservation where she and her family were surrounded by vast orchards and high canyon walls. Her first exposure to the arts was early on when her father began taking photographs of the traditional Pueblo ceremonies by day and working with wood by night. She was taught the value of storytelling by her mother, who used words to shape the world. Jeanine’s own making and storytelling practices were forged out of hours of being lost in the woods of Vermont, and sharing stories with her siblings. She began telling stories with her hands early on and has continued to pursue this practice. Over the last few years she has begun to foster her practice of teaching and passion for making.