“If a water tank with the name of a town on it can be called monumental;

if the discarded objects that tend to pile up along the margin of human habitats can be called peripheral;

if the monumental and the peripheral can be considered of equal importance;

if the landscape that supports this evidence of human occupation can be called sublime;

if the attempt by an artist to travel a purposeful line in order to make random discoveries can be called time well spent—then Altered States, held together by a wedge (keystone) inserted between imagination and reality, offers happiness to the lost, and opportunity to the reclusive.”

 

 

Roads are followed and photographed to find a line that searches for a profile of the American character.

Maps, pencils, keystrokes, and a Ford Ranger are used in equal measure to trace that line.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOWHERE, OKLAHOMA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HAPPY, TEXAS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BONANZA, COLORADO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LOST SPRINGS, WYOMING

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RECLUSE, WYOMING

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KEYSTONE, SOUTH DAKOTA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OPPORTUNITY, MONTANA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DIAMONDVILLE, WYOMING

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EUREKA, NEVADA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BUMMERVILLE, CALIFORNIA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOTHING, ARIZONA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, NEW MEXICO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EL DORADO, TEXAS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WATERLOO, KANSAS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LOST NATION, IOWA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DOWNER, MINNESOTA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DONNYBROOK, NORTH DAKOTA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FUNK, NEBRASKA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ALL DRAWINGS
9 x 12 inches
pencil on paper
2016 — 2019

 

The project has grown to include 169 drawings.

 

 

 

 

 

E S S A Y

 

Trail’s End and Gateway to the Stars

By Neil Fauerso


In the irascible director Ken Russell’s extremely psychedelic, often absurd 1980 film Altered States, William Hurt plays a psychologist who experiments with ayahuasca and sensory deprivation to enter different states of consciousness. Eventually he begins to “devolve” first into a caveman, then into a gorilla, and eventually into pure primordial energy. The more the state was altered the more elemental and unbounded it became.

I doubt that Hills Snyder named his exhibition and travelogue series after this film, but I am also positive without having to ask that he has seen it. His works, music, curation, teaching, and writings are often about that frisson of elemental expansion—the low shadows on the green desert floor, the darkness of a cave, the frequencies of music drifting through a house. Snyder’s pursuits are generally concerned with moments that spark and flare like flint struck on a canyon and then extinguish leaving a smoke trail of memory.

In Altered States, Snyder traveled to a litany of places that, in Snyder’s words: “goes through towns selected by the virtue of their names—not because they are odd or funny, but because they are evocative—emotional states, hoped for ideals, downers, and reckonings..."

The Essay Continues, Click Here...

 

 

 

 

 

 

T H E N A R R A T I V E J O U R N A L

 

Altered States: A Road Trip in Search of the American Character

By Hills Synder

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A R T R E P O R T T O D A Y A R T I C L E

 

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS WITH HILLS SNYDER

ASKING THE TOUGH QUESTIONS ARE:
GEORGANNE DEEN, ANNETTE DIMEO CARLOZZI, RILEY ROBINSON, JEFF F. WHEELER,
CATHERINE DEMARIA, LEIGH ANNE LESTER,
LESLIE MOODY CASTRO, ANNABELLE LARSEN, GORDON MCCONNELL, KATE GREEN,
RICHARD SAXTON, MATTHEW ERIC MENDEZ,
CHRIS SAUTER, ARIANE ROESCH, KAREN MAHAFFY, BILL NEVINS, ANNE WALLACE,
LARRY BOB PHILLIPS, SARITA TALUSANI KELLER,
HEYD FONTENOT, NEIL FAUERSO, TOBY KAMPS, RAINY KNUDSEN, JESSE AMADO

READ HERE

 

 

 

 

 

 

S N Y D E R C U R R I C U L U M V I T A E

 

Originally a painter, and known in the seventies and eighties for labor-intensive constructions and drawings featuring mythic narratives laced with dark humor and deceptive whimsy, Hills Snyder’s work took a more minimalist turn in the nineties with projects in which a large variety of images/objects were maneuvered into cohesive semi-site installations interacting with pre-existing architectural elements.

With The Incredible Shrinking Man (1999) and Dunk (2001), his work moved into performance and the interactive, using any media appropriate to the project at hand. In 2005, he created Book of The Dead as a resident artist in the International Artist Residency program at Artpace, San Antonio....

Continue reading this impressive, busy and productive CV...

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Gordy Grundy is the curator of this exhibition and editor for Art Report Today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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