Hillaree Hamblin is a fine artist and arts educator living and working in Houston, Texas. Her work has been shown in Germany, London and at various art spaces around Houston including Lawndale Art Center, Samara Gallery and Box 13 Artspace. In 2013, she received her Bachelors in painting from the University of Houston and this past May graduated with her Masters in Fine Arts from Houston Baptist University. Recently, she taught an experimental 3D workshop at Art League Houston for their 2016 Summer High School Studio Art Intensive program and currently teaches art classes to elementary, junior high & high school students.

Studio Practice

Using a conglomeration of experimental processes, my work uses intensely remembered emotions as the catalyst to create works that represent the essence of a memory or event. The resulting pieces are both 2 and 3-dimensional structures, containing caught fragments of the past infused with personal reflections. How do we make tangible the intangible? What is the physical formation of an emotion or a highly charged memory? In this search, I’m asking myself and the viewer how can we better document our past. In an age where we have what seems an unending amount of digital options, why does it feel like it's harder to retain memories or real emotion? My studio process is an experimental laboratory of sorts, at times somber, at times lively, at times chaotic-always in flux, always searching for the best way to make visible that which cannot easily be seen, created or rendered. Elements from these tactile formations of intangible emotions are broken down and reformed, in much the same way sediment and strata are layered. In giving such a fragile and constantly changing entity such as memory a physical form and life, I hope to simultaneously document and enshrine my own personal history.