Printer Friendly Version
ICKY to PROVOCATIVE
By, Tina Barni
Meg Hitchcock conceals her cellular phone in an old sock because she doesn't want to be pretentious. Hitchcock doesn't want to appear too serious or superior in a lot of things, and her art is one of them.
"Art has to be honest and come from a place that is really true," says Hitchcock. "I'm just purely expressing myself. It doesn't have to be great art. There is a fine line between provocative and pretentious. Provocative art is really honest and grabs you. When an artist is trying to being cute or clever, it becomes pretentious." Hitchcock's work has been described as "spontaneous," "honest," "childlike" and even "icky". In her "candy series" in 1998 , she created "Orthodox Gummies" a large drawing of a cross covered with gummy worms and hair. During the last two years, Hitchcock has received recognition for her art, of which she likes to describe as "honest." Out of her small studio in Graton, she constructs her art in a variety of mediums and with an array of different materials. She uses hammers, acrylics, garden hoses, Chiclets, paper, gummy worms and human hair to create her art. She uses a mixture of different colors in her drawings and admires such artist as Matisse and Milton Avery for their use of color in their works. Hitchcock typically makes "series" that encompass certain materials or images. With her recent series of paper drawings, entitled, "New Drawings," an image of a dog's head is present among a mixture of buildings and toasters. Other works incorporate photos and found materials. "Self-Portrait With Plastic Horse," created in 1997, was composed of a childhood photo and a broken plastic horse. Hitchcock also makes or sculpts her art, covering shoes in chocolate or making a giant ball from sponge and horsehair. Her work varies in price, with drawings that cost up to $700. She enjoys watching people try to analyze her work, but confesses that most of the time, the images she creates do not hold any symbolic or psychological meaning. " 'Self Portrait With Plastic Horse' is just a picture of child and broken horse," says Hitchcock. "People used to say, 'I see the illusion of broken dreams of childhood,' and I would say 'It's just a gray horse.' When people read into my art, it makes me laugh." Hitchcock has an intuitive sense of what appeals to her aesthetically with her art. Her favorite pieces tend to be her most current. Good art to Hitchcock unintentionally engages the viewer through its composition or images. For Hitchcock, her best work comes when she has no plans on how the piece is to evolve. She strives to be as emotionally and "cerebrally" detached as possible, letting the images arrive without prior thought or planning. Series evolve from drawings that have a repeated image or material. "The best creations are the ones with no emotional ties," says Hithcock. "If I approach my art with any kind of intention, it really gets pretty dry. If it doesn't have spontaneity then I don't interact with it as much. Thought or the 'cerebral-thing' can really get in the way. Each time I draw, it's like I'm drawing for the first time." A petite woman with short, neon-yellow hair, Hitchcock exudes a quiet, calm presence. Prone to fits of artistic rage that she releases by throwing plastic toys at the walls of her studio, Hitchcock is at once an enigma and an open-book. An ex- Born-Again- Christian, Hitchcock has learned to find power through being vulnerable in her personal life as well as with her art. "If I'm vulnerable, I'm going to show my weakness," says Hitchcock. "But actually when you are willing to be vulnerable it's totally empowering. I'm just learning that, and it's true with my art too. People are more responsive when you're true to yourself, and that is empowering." Hitchcock, 38, who lives in Santa Rosa, has been creating art all her life. She grew up in Springfield, Vermont and came to the Bay Area to study art at the San Francisco Art Institute. She received her BFA in 1996. During and after her studies, she worked at odd-jobs, until she decided to do her art full-time. Hitchcock grew up in middle-class surroundings with her two sisters, Trisha, 43, and Joanne, 42. Her father was an engineer and her mother, a homemaker. Hitchcock's parents still live in Vermont. She feels that her suburban upbringing played no role in type of artist she would become. Hitchcock does however, feel she has rebelled at the traditional notion of art, that made her feel a good artist must be able to paint realistically. As a child, she was often unhappy. She believes she was born sad. One of her childhood activities that she found joy in, was drawing. She would copy figures from fashion magazines with her sister, Trisha. "We'd get magazines and find the picture of the prettiest model and we would copy her on typewriter paper and just draw that for hours and hours," she says with enthusiasm in her voice. "I think I just got addicted to that." Hitchcock is still subject to bouts of melancholy. In the last eight years, she has been able to constructively use her depression. Her prior work was much darker and abstract, so much so that she keeps the majority of it locked away in storage. Now she describes her work as being much more light-hearted, referring to her "dark" period as a phase she had to go through. "I spent the first 30 years being sad," says Hitchcock. "No matter what I did it was heavy and dark, I can't even look at self-portraits now. It was sweet melancholy, when it almost felt good to feel sad. Art shifts the focus for me, so I am not there stewing in my own juices, I can at least take that melancholy and put that on paper or do something constructive with that." Hithcock's art is at times simplistic and can look unfinished. Figures in her drawings often have missing body parts or are composed of one or two images. In her "hose series" drawings of human heads seem to be floating among images of water hoses. She has been compared to contemporary artists such as Luc Tuymans and Cy Twombly. Her work has been shown at the Sonoma Museum of Visual Art, Southern Exposure, the Meridian and Quotidian galleries in San Francisco. Hitchcock struggles through the process of creating art. With the music of the Grateful Dead playing in the background, she crouches in a fetal-position and draws for hours on-end, ignoring the physical detriments to her knees and back. "It makes me feel more secure, like I am on top of it, more in control," says Hitchcock. "And I like the feeling of being all crunched up. But after eight of hours of doing that, I am in agony." Jack Stuppin, 66, has known Hitchcock for eight years. Stuppin lives in Sebastopol, and is a landscape artist whose drawings are housed at the M.H. de. Young Museum in San Francisco. He has seen Hitchcock's work evolve over the years and feels she is constantly evolving in style and uses different mediums to keep her work honest and different. "I've seen a dramatic change in attitude and approach," says Stuppin. "She's gone through a series of manifestations. I think artists have the obligation to reinvent themselves. If you're doing the same thing over again, it becomes craft instead of art." Hitchcock is aware that some people may view her as too "childish" and question her ability as a serious artist. In 1999, she created a series of realistic drawings taken from photographs of her parents' wedding. "Sometimes people will look at a drawing and say,'my five year-old can do that,'" says Hitchcock. "I know that is not true, but I appreciate their honesty. There was a part of me for many years, that had to show people I could draw and paint realistic portraits and art. But this style I have now, is something I've arrived at, after studying art for many years." Harley, 59, who has no last name, was the co-curator for the 1998 Sonoma Museum of Visual Art "Ingress" show, where Hitchcock displayed her "candy-series" pieces. A Sonoma artist as well as President of the Sonoma Museum of Visual Arts, Harley feels her work is unusual and daring. "Meg crosses the line from one media to another," says Harley. "She is not afraid to take risks, and that makes for interesting work." Hitchcock has found another vocation as owner of the MeSH gallery in Sebastopol. The gallery, which consists of two employees, is also a framing shop. The gallery was left to her by her late friend, Steven Kutchens, who died of Leukemia in July of last year. Hitchcock shows alternative art by emerging artists who meet with her aesthetic. Heather Patterson displays a quilt made out of plastic bags and Wendy Heldman, shows a meat-grinder with its opening covered in beads. "When you're an artist, it is easy to get caught up in your own ego because it is about self-expression and self-promotion," says Hitchcock. "By having this gallery, I am still responsible for putting art out there and having it be noticed. It's not mine, but it's my vision though, because I'm selecting it." Although Hitchcock may be in the business finding art made by other people, her primary concern in life is producing art. She continually strives to create "honest" and "provocative" art, that does not necessarily mean anything beyond the images it presents. Her next series in May, are drawings of thumbs mixed with various images on paper. Next month, she will have her first solo show at the Michael Cross Gallery in Kansas City and in May she will have another solo show at the Quotidian in San Francisco. "All too often, people think art has to be about something, a metaphor about something else; that it's got to be serious," says Hitchcock. " I think people take art too seriously. Sometimes it's just fun. Sometimes it doesn't have any meaning beyond what it is, and I think people should relax around it a little bit more than they do."