About the Artist
Hillary Steel is an artist and teacher who specializes in weaving and resist dyeing. She incorporates ikat and shibori (in Spanish, jaspe, and amarras) into her hand-woven wall pieces. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo. After graduation, she studied textiles through post-baccalaureate coursework at SUNY Buffalo State College and the University of Pittsburgh as well as through travel to Côte d'Ivoire, Peru, Chile, and Mexico. Hillary received a Masters in Teaching degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She has worked in public and private schools in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area as an artist in residence, creating site-specific collaborative textiles with students, and as an art teacher. Since 2006, along with colleague Virginia Davis, Hillary has been studying with and documenting the work of Mexican master rebozo weaver Don Evaristo Borboa Casas, who passed away in 2020. They produced a short film about his work and will soon publish a book on the same topic.
Hillary's work has been included in national and international exhibitions in Costa Rica, Mexico, Japan, Korea, China, and in many of our American embassies through the Art in Embassies Program, most recently in Conakry, Guinea. Her textiles have been the subject of solo shows at International Art & Artist @ Hillyer in Washington D.C, at the McLean Project for the Arts and artspace Gallery in Virginia, at the Glenview Mansion Art Gallery in Maryland, and at other venues in Pennsylvania and Ohio, as well as in many group art exhibits. Steel’s work is also included in the book Art on the Edge: Seventeen Contemporary American Artists published by the U.S. Department of State. Hillary’s textile art is held in private and public collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery, The George Washington University Textile Museum in Washington, D.C., and the American embassies in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and Tijuana, Mexico. Recently, two pieces of her work, Passage (2008) and Soul Catchers (2013) were acquired by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities for their permanent collection. Steel is a recipient of a 2018 Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award and an FY21 Artists and Scholars award from the Montgomery County Arts and Humanities Council. She has been a resident of Montgomery County, Maryland since 1994, and maintains a studio in Silver Spring.
Hillary Steel website View Website
Artist's Statement
Immersion in the methods of the international textile community has been a critical factor in my ongoing art education since traveling to Cote d’Ivoire in 1992. Since 2007, I have focused on learning a traditional resist-dyeing technique, jáspe, from master weavers in México.
Global resist dye processes have been integral to my dyed, woven, and constructed art. I have inherited a wealth of knowledge about textile processes and continually discover new ways to approach my personal work and address current events. It is my hope that the completed work translates something tangible to the viewer and offers space for reflection.
