Until I grew up, I never understood why my mother would get angry when I used her fabric scissors for one of my many non-fabric projects. My attraction to collage has been lifelong, as well as my interest in combining unexpected materials together. As a young girl, the hours spent cutting magazines was a way to develop an appreciation of good design, culling the very best images from others for my own use.
An artist residency in Fiskars, Finland brought me to a new place with collage. While there, I used mixed media materials to explore landscape, a practice I continue to this day. Rather than the found images I gravitated towards in my youth, I now work with collage more abstractly. The use of color and choice of materials are combined to evoke the experience of not just seeing your surroundings, but feeling them, spending time there. The mark of the hand is important to me in all my artwork, and the act of meticulously cutting and then placing hundreds of tiny elements is my meditation.
While in Fiskars, I also acquired several precious cutting tools that are still my favorites for collage. I keep them hidden in their own bag, never to be used for anything else.
Bio
Hilary Pfeifer is a craft-influenced sculptor who’s more often found scouring hardware stores for her materials rather than a traditional art supply store. Her work explores the natural world through sculpture, collage, and installation, often subtly incorporating found objects into her sculptures made from reclaimed wood and laser cut metal. Her recent collage work is made by hand-cutting hundreds of pieces of sign vinyl, shelf papers, sandpaper, or joint tape to create a dense composition.