Enjoy this 3 minute video where artist Justine Hill shares her ideas, inspirations and process in creating the commission The Travelers
The Travelers is a large-scale work by Justine Hill, commissioned by the Cantor Art Gallery at the College of the Holy Cross where Hill received her BA.
For The Travelers, Hill draws from a long-standing interest in science fiction and fantasy, citing Octavia Butler, Ursula le Guin and N.K. Jemisin as inspirational authors in this genre alongside an interest in the visual and narrative histories of ancient civilizations and mythology. Another seminal work that inspired this piece was Philip Glass’s 1983 opera Akhnaten based on the life of the Egyptian Pharaoh. Hill states: “These stories of power and hardship, in unknown or extinct worlds, often show the dangerous possibilities in the creation of symbols, myths and common beliefs, but also the necessity for order and beauty to produce comfort and safety.” The Travelers aligns itself to these worlds through visual ciphers such as the double moon, marking a sense of place and time which is familiar yet enigmatic.
“I was honored and a bit overwhelmed when Meredith Fluke, the gallery director, invited me to create a project for the new Cantor Window. I knew I wanted to create something in line with my ongoing practice concerned with ideas of sentience and world building. I wanted to create a painting with humor and charm to stimulate imagination. I wanted to pull motifs and organizational styles from antiquity to post-modernity to assemble something untethered to a specific time and place. But the most challenging part of the project was I desperately wanted to make the visual arts faculty proud, as they played an immeasurable role in why I am an artist.”
– Justine Hill
The Travelers is the inaugural project in the Cantor Window of the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery in the new Prior Performing Arts Center at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA and will be on view through June 2023.
The Travelers installed in The Cantor Window, The College of Holy Cross, Worcester, MA
Justine Hill
The Travelers
September 2022 – June 2023
The Cantor Window
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery
The College of Holy Cross, Worcester, MA
Visit the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery’s website.
