Sol Hill

I am an artist interested in working with the artifacts of present day photographic digital imaging. I seek to transform a photographic work into an art object producing work on different surfaces and hand applying varnishes and other materials to create surface textures.

I use the artifact of digital noise to render the photograph into a contemporary visual trope. Digital noise is false exposure recorded by a digital sensor. A digital sensor records energy. It is designed to record photon energy, but it is also sensitive to other types of energy, the most interesting of which is cosmic noise. Cosmic noise is the wavelength energy signature that exists in any given place. It is comprised of the cosmic energies that pervades the universe as well as from human sources in radio & television broadcasts, satellite feeds, cellular towers and wifi signals. These unseen energies contribute to the rendering of my photographic imagery.

My father is a sculptor and potter. My mother works in pencil, mixed media and ceramics. When I was very young, my parents founded Hill's gallery, one of the first significant contemporary art galleries in Santa Fe. Growing up among the arts and adobe walls of New Mexico affected my aesthetic sensibilities. Colors, textures and creative experiments are the stuff of my earliest memories. I have striven to incorporate these sensual elements into my photography.
After my parents divorced, I spent years bouncing back and forth between them among nine different states in every region of the United States. I also lived and studied overseas in Jamaica and Germany. My fragmented and dislocated childhood was not easy, but it gave me the gift of an unusual perspective on the differences and commonalities that are often taken for granted. I studied International Affairs at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon and completed my MFA at the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, California. Furthermore, my wife is Brazilian and we travel regularly to her amazing home country.
Because I have experienced such a diversity of spiritual, cultural, and economic conventions I have an unquenchable yearning to look beyond indoctrinated beliefs for transcendent harmonies both outwardly in the world and inwardly in my self. This motivation drives much of how I approach my creative practice.


Portfolio:

Token Feminine

The mannequin in the storefront window is a symbol of consumer culture. It is an emblem upon which the desire and fantasy of sex and fashion are draped and from which complex valuations of body image are ingested. The mannequin is a token feminine used to impart cultural conventions. I dissipate the literal mannequin in order to reveal the nature of the boundary between the reverie of the token and the reality of the plastic dummy.

I use the artifact of digital noise to render the photograph into a contemporary visual trope. Digital noise is false exposure recorded by a digital sensor. A digital sensor records energy. It is designed to record photon energy, but it is also sensitive to other types of energy, the most interesting of which is cosmic noise. Cosmic noise is the wavelength energy signature that exists in any given place. It is comprised of the cosmic energies that pervades the universe as well as from human sources in radio & television broadcasts, satellite feeds, cellular towers and wifi signals. These unseen energies contribute to the rendering of my photographic imagery.

Token Feminine # L1002434 “Token Feminine # L1002434”

The mannequin in the storefront window is a symbol of consumer culture. It is an emblem upon which the desire and fantasy of sex and fashion are draped and from which complex valuations of body image are ingested. The mannequin is a token feminine used to impart cultural conventions. I dissipate the literal mannequin in order to reveal the nature of the boundary between the reverie of the token and the reality of the plastic dummy.
I use the artifact of digital noise to render the photograph into a contemporary visual trope. Digital noise is false exposure recorded by a digital sensor. A digital sensor records energy. It is designed to record photon energy, but it is also sensitive to other types of energy, the most interesting of which is cosmic noise. Cosmic noise is the wavelength energy signature that exists in any given place. It is comprised of the cosmic energies that pervades the universe as well as from human sources in radio & television broadcasts, satellite feeds, cellular towers and wifi signals. These unseen energies contribute to the rendering of my photographic imagery.

Token Feminine # L1002440 “Token Feminine # L1002440”

The mannequin in the storefront window is a symbol of consumer culture. It is an emblem upon which the desire and fantasy of sex and fashion are draped and from which complex valuations of body image are ingested. The mannequin is a token feminine used to impart cultural conventions. I dissipate the literal mannequin in order to reveal the nature of the boundary between the reverie of the token and the reality of the plastic dummy.
I use the artifact of digital noise to render the photograph into a contemporary visual trope. Digital noise is false exposure recorded by a digital sensor. A digital sensor records energy. It is designed to record photon energy, but it is also sensitive to other types of energy, the most interesting of which is cosmic noise. Cosmic noise is the wavelength energy signature that exists in any given place. It is comprised of the cosmic energies that pervades the universe as well as from human sources in radio & television broadcasts, satellite feeds, cellular towers and wifi signals. These unseen energies contribute to the rendering of my photographic imagery.

Token Feminine # L1004294 “Token Feminine # L1004294”

The mannequin in the storefront window is a symbol of consumer culture. It is an emblem upon which the desire and fantasy of sex and fashion are draped and from which complex valuations of body image are ingested. The mannequin is a token feminine used to impart cultural conventions. I dissipate the literal mannequin in order to reveal the nature of the boundary between the reverie of the token and the reality of the plastic dummy.
I use the artifact of digital noise to render the photograph into a contemporary visual trope. Digital noise is false exposure recorded by a digital sensor. A digital sensor records energy. It is designed to record photon energy, but it is also sensitive to other types of energy, the most interesting of which is cosmic noise. Cosmic noise is the wavelength energy signature that exists in any given place. It is comprised of the cosmic energies that pervades the universe as well as from human sources in radio & television broadcasts, satellite feeds, cellular towers and wifi signals. These unseen energies contribute to the rendering of my photographic imagery.

Token Feminine # L1004294 “Token Feminine # L1004294”

The mannequin in the storefront window is a symbol of consumer culture. It is an emblem upon which the desire and fantasy of sex and fashion are draped and from which complex valuations of body image are ingested. The mannequin is a token feminine used to impart cultural conventions. I dissipate the literal mannequin in order to reveal the nature of the boundary between the reverie of the token and the reality of the plastic dummy.
I use the artifact of digital noise to render the photograph into a contemporary visual trope. Digital noise is false exposure recorded by a digital sensor. A digital sensor records energy. It is designed to record photon energy, but it is also sensitive to other types of energy, the most interesting of which is cosmic noise. Cosmic noise is the wavelength energy signature that exists in any given place. It is comprised of the cosmic energies that pervades the universe as well as from human sources in radio & television broadcasts, satellite feeds, cellular towers and wifi signals. These unseen energies contribute to the rendering of my photographic imagery.

Token Feminine # L1067813 “Token Feminine # L1067813”

The mannequin in the storefront window is a symbol of consumer culture. It is an emblem upon which the desire and fantasy of sex and fashion are draped and from which complex valuations of body image are ingested. The mannequin is a token feminine used to impart cultural conventions. I dissipate the literal mannequin in order to reveal the nature of the boundary between the reverie of the token and the reality of the plastic dummy.
I use the artifact of digital noise to render the photograph into a contemporary visual trope. Digital noise is false exposure recorded by a digital sensor. A digital sensor records energy. It is designed to record photon energy, but it is also sensitive to other types of energy, the most interesting of which is cosmic noise. Cosmic noise is the wavelength energy signature that exists in any given place. It is comprised of the cosmic energies that pervades the universe as well as from human sources in radio & television broadcasts, satellite feeds, cellular towers and wifi signals. These unseen energies contribute to the rendering of my photographic imagery.

Token Feminine # L1067816 “Token Feminine # L1067816”

The mannequin in the storefront window is a symbol of consumer culture. It is an emblem upon which the desire and fantasy of sex and fashion are draped and from which complex valuations of body image are ingested. The mannequin is a token feminine used to impart cultural conventions. I dissipate the literal mannequin in order to reveal the nature of the boundary between the reverie of the token and the reality of the plastic dummy.
I use the artifact of digital noise to render the photograph into a contemporary visual trope. Digital noise is false exposure recorded by a digital sensor. A digital sensor records energy. It is designed to record photon energy, but it is also sensitive to other types of energy, the most interesting of which is cosmic noise. Cosmic noise is the wavelength energy signature that exists in any given place. It is comprised of the cosmic energies that pervades the universe as well as from human sources in radio & television broadcasts, satellite feeds, cellular towers and wifi signals. These unseen energies contribute to the rendering of my photographic imagery.

Token Feminine # L9999425 “Token Feminine # L9999425”

The mannequin in the storefront window is a symbol of consumer culture. It is an emblem upon which the desire and fantasy of sex and fashion are draped and from which complex valuations of body image are ingested. The mannequin is a token feminine used to impart cultural conventions. I dissipate the literal mannequin in order to reveal the nature of the boundary between the reverie of the token and the reality of the plastic dummy.
I use the artifact of digital noise to render the photograph into a contemporary visual trope. Digital noise is false exposure recorded by a digital sensor. A digital sensor records energy. It is designed to record photon energy, but it is also sensitive to other types of energy, the most interesting of which is cosmic noise. Cosmic noise is the wavelength energy signature that exists in any given place. It is comprised of the cosmic energies that pervades the universe as well as from human sources in radio & television broadcasts, satellite feeds, cellular towers and wifi signals. These unseen energies contribute to the rendering of my photographic imagery.