on November 1, 2020

Meg Hitchcock: Illuminate at the Garrison Art Center

One of the best exhibitions in the Hudson Valley this fall is Meg Hitchcock’s exquisite solo show Meg Hitchcock: Illuminate at the Garrison Art Center, on view through November 8. The show features three series of works on paper dating from 2008 to the present. The larger gallery includes minutely detailed collages composed of individual letters and words cut from books or typed on a typewriter. Hitchcock’s collages are a culmination of her lifelong interest in religion, literature, and psychology. A former evangelical Christian, she has since explored many of the world’s religions and their sacred texts. She deconstructs and reassembles words from the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita, and numerous Buddhist sutras, combining writing from both eastern and western religions in a process she calls “cross pollination.” The press release for Illuminate states that through her work, Hitchcock reaches the conclusion that all varieties of religious expression are based in their cultural differences, but spirituality is a shared experience of the heart. “Rather than illuminating a long-established, patriarchal religion, Hitchcock sets out to illuminate the state of awareness.”

The second smaller gallery at the Garrison Art Center contains Hitchcock’s most recent works on paper that combine small text collages with drawings. Her new drawings mark an interesting direction in her work with the inclusion of three-dimensional objects and the illusion of space. I contacted Hitchcock to ask about this change in her work and also about what it has been like to create new work and plan for a solo exhibition during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Meg Hitchcock: Illuminate installation view
Meg Hitchcock, The Ten Thousand Entanglements (detail), 2019, Typed words, paint, 34 x 28 in.

Art Valley: What has motivated the recent change in your work, specifically the incorporation of drawing and shapes?

Meg Hitchcock: I’ve wanted to incorporate painting in my text work for several years, but hadn’t found a way that looked natural and seamless. And then I got inspired by illuminated manuscripts, and found that I could create my own visual language using them as a model. For me, the addition of form and color to the text adds another layer of interest.

Meg Hitchcock: Illuminate, Installation view
Meg Hitchcock, Impermanence IV, Longchenpa on Impermanence, Part 4 of 4, 2020, Letters cut from the Koran, acrylic, graphite, embroidery floss, gold leaf, 14 x 11 in.

AV: Do you find it more liberating somehow to be including drawings? Your older work could be very labor intensive.

MH: Yes, I’m so happy to return to painting and drawing after ten years of cutting letters! It’s very playful and liberating in the sense that it’s impossible to make a mistake. If I don’t like something, I just paint over it or erase it, and the resulting pentimenti make the piece more interesting. But I still enjoy the meditative aspect of cutting letters, so it’s a wonderful balance.

Impermanence II, Longchenpa on Impermanence, Part 2 of 4, 2020, Letters cut from the Kabbalah, acrylic, graphite, gold leaf, 14 x 11 in.

AV: Have you changed the types of text sources you are using in your work? 

MH: I’m really interested in Buddhist writings at the moment, the more esoteric the better. The teachings are often way over my head, but I love the language and find it inspiring. So to create these writings, I cut letters most often from the Bible, simply because I have a large collection of them, but I also use the Koran, as well as the Torah.

Meg Hitchcock, Delphinium, 2019, Typed words, paint, 22 1/2 x 22 1/2 in.

AV: Can you say something about the Garrison Art Center show—it brings together different bodies of work done over the past few years. It’s also maybe your first show near your new home in Peekskill after showing in New York City. 

MH: It was such an honor to be the Visiting Artist for 2020, and wonderful to have a brick and mortar show during this crazy year. My work is in both galleries, so I was able to show a large body of work. It was interesting for me to see the continuity between the different series, which I began in 2008. I can see the continuous thread that weaves through my work—namely, my desire to express the experience of spiritual connection. I’m interested in going beyond religious affiliations, to focus instead on our shared humanity. 

Meg Hitchcock, Confessions, 2018, Letters cut from “The Confessions of St. Augustine”, burned holes in paper, 27 x 22 1/2 in.

AV: Has the COVID-19 pandemic had any influence on your work?

MH: Yes, in the sense that there are fewer distractions, which translates into more time in the studio. For better or worse, there’s no place to go, so I’ve gotten a lot of studio work done this year! I also think that we feel more united with each other because of the pandemic; there’s this feeling that we’re all in this together. This has added a rich layer to my work—maybe not visible, but felt.

Meg Hitchcock: Illuminate is on view at the Garrison Art Center through Sunday, November 8. More information about the exhibition and Meg Hitchcock’s work can be found at garrisonartcenter.org and meghitchcock.com.

Meg Hitchcock is a text-based artist living and working in New York’s Hudson Valley. Her work has been shown in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, London, and Berlin, and has been included in State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now at Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, AK and Bibliotechaphilia at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA. Hitchcock has been reviewed in Art in America, ArtCritical, The New Criterion, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, and The Daily Beast. She received her BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute, and studied classical painting in Florence, Italy.