By Chelsea Schmid
Staff Writer who is Special to LIVE!
May 15, 2008 They must’ve thought it was glued down—it looked like it might have been—but as several nudging shoe tips quickly discovered, the grand-prize winning sand and clay installation had been assembled on the second-story floor of the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts in free form. Artist Steve Hilton shook hands and spoke about his construction during last month’s 17th Annual Ceramics Competition, stopping from time to time to pull a paintbrush from his pocket and sweep some trampled sand back into place in piles around the floor. Later, the piece of artwork that took 30 hours to create would be swept up in a matter of minutes, never again to be made in exactly the same pattern as won the contest.
With a globular terrain of sand and bits of black and brown clay of varying heights stuck in, the “installation” looked like a topographical map made of the elements in the land depicted. There must have been thousands of these ceramic slivers, each with its own unique shape and color. They looked like pieces of petrified wood, stuck in the sand one by one until they formed mountain ranges and valleys, ridges and cliffs, in some archaic, lifeless world. One could almost imagine the outer sand banks as shores to an invisible sea, while others no doubt saw something entirely different.
“I want people to look at this and see nature differently,” Hilton said of his work’s impression. “So the next time you go to Zion National Park . . . or the next time you see an island in the Pacific, maybe you’ll see it differently.”
The ambition seemed to have met its end as art collectors, creators, and critics eyeballed the work on the floor, followed by lines of ‘It looks like . . . ’ and the appropriate landscape to suit their preferences. But equally intriguing as the design is the serendipitous method by which the concept was conceived.
“I could tell you that I carved them all individually, but you probably wouldn’t believe it,” Hilton began. “I’m a cheapskate. I don’t like to buy clay, so I used to haul clay from the undergrad studios at ASU to my studio. I got tired of cleaning out the buckets, so I started putting plastic bags in the buckets. And then one day as I was squeezing the clay out of the bags I thought, ‘well what would happen if I put this in the kiln,’ and I did, and this is what happened,” he said, holding up one of the pieces.
But that’s not the only accidental discovery this artist has made to personalize his craft. Steve Hilton also does a sand-cast glaze, which he created on an occasion where he accidentally spilled some sand into a glaze before firing it in the kiln. This too has become a favorite work of his.
Hilton currently hails from Wichita Falls, though he has lived all over the place due to his military upbringing. His wife is also an artist and Hilton says she serves as his chief installer, although she would prefer to expedite the process as opposed to his long and arduous method.
“[My wife] wants me to install them in big chunks and bring them in and set them down, pour sand around them, and an hour later, walk away,” Hilton said. “Most of the time I have three, four, five, seven people working, so there’s something about the social aspect of hanging with my friends, making art, talking about things, and listening to the radio—you know, whatever, and letting other people make decisions.”
Hilton’s first installation was done in a graduate class in 2005 and was about three times the size of the one constructed for the National Ceramics Competition. When he arrives on site, he doesn’t really have a set plan he follows for the design. Rather, he lets those who are helping him be creative, but facilitates by standing on a ladder at times and giving direction.
“It becomes a common vision among the people working on it,” Hilton said. For the Ceramics Competition, Hilton had seven people assisting him for three days, which he says is a relatively quick installation.
Steve Hilton currently teaches art to educators for Midwestern State University. Originally a geology major, Hilton found an interest in pottery-making when a friend, citing his admitted frugality, told him that if he’d start making pots he’d never have to buy another Christmas present. Thirty minutes later, Hilton was hooked; he went back to school to get a Master’s in art education, and later an MFA.
The National Ceramics Competition is a biennial event that San Angelo has hosted since 1986. In addition to featuring artists from all over the United States, the competition is open to applicants from Canada and Mexico. The event is hosted by the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, and also promoted by the San Angelo Art Club.
For more information on the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, visit: www.samfa.org
To view more of Steve Hilton’s work, visit: www.stevenhilton.com
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