Collection: Thomas Hill | Harmon Guest House + Gallery Lulo Collaboration
BETWEEN THE WOODS AND THE WATER -SONOMA COUNTY BIRD IMPRESSIONS
Thomas Hill | Harmon Guest House + Gallery Lulo collaboration
Opening Night Sunday May 7th 4-6pm 2023
With special pouring of Cruess wine spring release Rose by owners Alissa and Anthony.
May 2023 through June 2023
We are excited to announce a collaboration with Gallery Lulo and Harmon Guest House in showing work by artist Thomas Hill.
Harmon Guest House, an award-winning and environmentally friendly retreat in the heart of Healdsburg’s charming downtown, is thrilled to announce a partnership with local Gallery Lulo to debut a special art installation by esteemed sculptor Thomas Hill as part of the hotel’s rotating art installation program.
Join us to view a series of steel wire formations located throughout the hotel, as well as a large-scale installation at Gallery Lulo. The work will be on display now through June 2023.
The installations at Harmon House include “A Herd of Curlews – Bodega Bay,” Hill’s signature steel wire style appears as a flock of majestic birds moving in perfect synchronicity that he witnessed one Christmas on the coast.
In “Black Necked Stilts – Petaluma,” the artist captures the statuesque birds made up of angled lines that parade along the bay shore he enjoys viewing from his commutes on the SMART train.
In “California Quail – Occidental,” inspiration comes from walking amongst the oaks and redwood trees and being charmed by the coveys of quail busily dashing on the forest grounds.
In “Flying Curlew Sequence – Bodega Bay,” Hill reflects on how a single flap of a bird’s wings can be viewed almost as an animation when individual birds combine to create a sense of movement.
And included as number five is “Sandpipers; on the edge of the ocean." "You see lots of these little guys by the water's edge.. running along in a blur of legs and then all taking off as one when the mood takes them. They spend their whole life at the beach, nesting in the cover of the sand dunes and moving endlessly from land to water; a kind of California dream lifestyle.”
Of the installation "Maguari Storks" at Gallery Lulo Thomas says, “The starting point for this piece was a video I made at San Francisco Zoo of a Maguari Stork. Whilst I was filming he suddenly threw his head back in a wonderfully eccentric display and so back in the studio I was able to stop frame the video and make a series of drawings based on this movement. My aim was to keep a strong sense of movement in the piece and to translate the gesture of my drawings into three dimensions."
“I find that wire can suggest a line almost like a three-dimensional ink drawing, with a little hammering to create added weight and texture like the twist dip of a pen,” notes Hill. “For me, it is the ideal material for evoking the lightness and feathery staccato movements of birds.”
For the materials used in connection with the installation at Harmon House, Thomas Says;
“I wanted to say a little about my choice of materials, and also how this relates to the Hotel architecture. The pieces in this group are all made from mild steel wire, an industrial material mostly used for tying rebar together whilst constructing concrete buildings, so I like to imagine that the walls here in Harmon are full of the same wire as my birds are made from. I love the poured concrete textures of the hotel; the impression left from the wooden shuttering creates a sense of nature in the person-made environment. Similarly, the steel window frames echo the steel of my birds... the fluid lines of my pieces weaving a counterpoint around the strict right angles of the building.”
Thomas Hill has been a full-time artist since 1994, he makes pieces both for exhibitions and for corporate, public, and private commissions. "My pieces are made using mild steel wire, with additions of steel or copper sheet and copper meshes. I consider myself to be both a draftsman and a metalworker. My three-dimensional pieces are based on drawn studies of birds and animals in motion. I find that the steel wire I use behaves in much the same way as a quickly drawn line, and thus I am able to create, in effect, a three-dimensional “sketch.”"