Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Hattie Phillips. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hattie, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
I’ve had the opportunity to create or steward a lot of meaningful work. Within that continuum, the most collaborative and important project I’ve worked on is an artist book called, ‘M.’
In 2018, my sibling nearly died due to complications from Hirschsprung’s Disease, a rare intestinal disorder. As the family members of a disabled individual, we are familiar with the often cyclical presentations of the disease. However, this was totally different and very, very scary. She had to undergo an intensely life-changing, invasive surgery and was in the hospital for nearly a month. When she was finally released from the hospital, she needed extra support, so while my parents returned to work, I became part of her caretaking team.
My sibling, Maggie, is an advocate for disability visibility and justice. One of the ways she does this is by recording her experience and sharing it through photography. She has given me consent to take photos of medical processes, home care, and scars that kept her alive. While she was in the hospital, I documented as much as she was comfortable with. We created an archive of notes, medical charts, Polaroids, and digital photographs. Having lost much of her memory about/during/surrounding the event, I asked Maggie if she’d like to collaborate with me to make a book about it. We used the collaborative process as a way for her to be reintroduced to the event and tell her side of the story.
The book itself is a single-sheet artist book housed inside a wooden, laser cut and engraved box with a clear, acrylic lid. The lid has the title, M., laser engraved on it. When the light passes through the acrylic, the shadow of the title lies across the top of the book. The content of the book itself was printed on a soft, pink Thai Unryu paper that is semi-translucent with pearlescent whorls of material throughout—it is quite flesh-like. The book was assembled using scanned images of Polaroids and digital images of Maggie’s time in the hospital and her recovery. I built the archive and put them in chronological order, but Maggie chose all the images to be used. Once Maggie had the order of the images, I asked her if she would like to handwrite her version of what she remembered happening in those moments. After creating and laying out the digital, archival print on the Unryu, I screenprinted her handwritten narrative onto the images. The final form of the single-sheet book is folded in and on itself over and over. It has small flaps and directional transitions throughout—and it is the same length, overall, as the amount of intestines Maggie has left.
While creating the book was incredibly special and the first of many collaborations, there’s an additional pinnacle to this artwork. In 2022, I donated a copy of this book (1 of 4) to the Ohio University Alden Fine Arts Library Special Collection. Listing Maggie and I as the creators, we share a call number in the Alden Library for our book! Users can search ALICE for our last name and our item comes up. It feels very surreal! Additionally, in 2023, I curated a group show called, “Passages,” in Trisolini Gallery at Ohio University. Maggie and I both showed collaborative work we had done together, and she was even able to come to the opening. I am so grateful that someone I love so much trusts me to hold such vulnerable parts of their history and story.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Considering how I became an artist and arts administrator often makes me chuckle because this is definitely not how I thought this would go. Though I’ve always been creative, I started my studies as a pre-med student. I’m still very interested in holistic biological processes and environmental factors, but I realized early on that I wouldn’t be able to deliver life-changing news or results to clients or patients. During this transitory time, I took my first art class with Brent Webb at Southeastern Illinois College.
Despite common lore that art is easy (I do not know who started this rumor), I found that having the technical and conceptual skills to execute visually exciting and relevant artwork was every bit as challenging as my science classes. He introduced my classmates and I to highly abstract, conceptual art while still sharing the art historical canon. More than that, he encouraged us to interrogate and examine that continuum as artists. Mr. Webb taught in a non-linear, curious way that cumulatively empowered the technical and conceptual aspects of our art making. I think this resonated with me because it was how I already considered things, but his way of introducing it provided a structure I could build on. Sixteen years later, I am still building on that foundation. I’m grateful that he was introduced into my life when he was.
As an artist, my current creative research focuses on narrative, typically driven by memory.
Some common themes in my work include family, loss, and erasure. I’m interested in the exploratory areas woven into the liminal space between moments and memory. Memory is so fickle, when we recall something the past impresses on the present while simultaneously altering the original. We can never recall precisely without altering both the past and present. Memory is such a tricky and volatile thing. I am particularly drawn to the repetitive and fragmented segments tethering time together. What does connection look like? What does time look like? It often becomes a factor or unlisted construct within my work. Using processes like print and photography, my work investigates links, happenstance, and nuance within personal memory, archives, and experience.
I explored the idea of memory through several different media for my Master of Fine Arts thesis, “The Reminds Me,” in 2022. For example, my piece, “9 Panes,” originated from an expired package of Polaroid film that my dad gave to me that he had inherited from his dad. Scanning that image in, I manipulated and archivally printed the results. Then, I added two layers of laser engraving; one hand drawn and the other map coordinates of where the building in the image used to be. Another piece, “Darla,” was a 40 x 50-inch cyanotype stretched over a pine frame with a looped audio component made by layering 27 different home movies (collected between 2015-2018) playing from behind it.
I rarely consign myself to a specific form of art making. I am an accomplished printmaker and painter, but I’m also skilled in many other creative spaces like quilting, alternative photography, and post-digital manipulation. It is important to me that the idea or the concept I am chewing on—considering—has room to breathe. I don’t think that a project has to happen within the parameters of my ability. In fact, it probably shouldn’t. One of the best parts of being an artist is having an idea and being able to visualize the trajectory or connective tissue between the idea and the representation. Sometimes that representation or visual categorization has to happen outside of your current capability. That tentative, vulnerable flicker of growth and understanding leads to (visual) interpretation and creation.
There are different theories about why people are drawn to create and what art is, but I believe that art is a visual language and artists talk in pictures. Some folks think in images while others think in letters or numbers or sound. All are necessary. Think of all the things we would never know except someone stewards the idea and shares it with the world.
In addition to being an artist, I’m also an arts administrator with a specialization in museum studies. I’ve spent a fair amount of time absorbing art historical context and expect to present my thesis in 2026. I bring the same curiosity, individuated contextualization, and strategy to arts administration that I do to art making. I take stewarding the ideas of my collaborators and partners as seriously as I take stewarding my own. I believe my habit of considering ideas from different angles, while considering policy, systems/administrative nuance, and equity, until I feel satisfied makes me a unique thinker.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I am a fat, first generation college graduate coming from a labor class/poverty wage background who grew up with a disabled sibling. Each of these descriptors create their own environment and responses. However, having experienced them all at the same time, I find that I have a different understanding and outlook on the world than some. In a space driven by capital where worth is derived from capacity to labor, I am keenly aware of how systems, policy, and socio-cultural perception impact me. I suppose I fall into the category of creative survival— with less access to resources you gotta figure out ways to get things done with what you have. And you must do it in a way that seeds resources (financial, physical, emotional, spiritual) for the future because starting over is herculean. There is a constant, strategic kind of survival that happens in these spaces and a revolving list of deficits reminds you of what you still need to add to your current assets.
I was not actively aware of this mindset until I took Intro to Arts Administration with Dr. Christi Camper Moore at Ohio University. While warning against the propensity of non-profits or arts organizations to enter into an area without fully considering what the stakeholders and community may want/need–she stated, “You cannot do art to people,” and “Never assume a deficit.” Small but hugely perspective shifting. First, if you must take stock of something take stock of the relational dynamics and needs of the people you have just pledged to serve. They should lead the call to action, not your agenda. And second, identify assets, not lack. You cannot know what is missing until you know what is already present. And while it differs slightly from what I’ve described experiencing, it did illuminate my habits and flip a switch in my brain that allowed me to actively acknowledge that I was doing this within my own life. It shifted how I relate to others, myself, and my missions.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
As someone who thinks in pictures and develops ideas visually, I’ve spent my entire life accumulating skills that allow me to share these things with those around me. I look forward to spending the rest of my life gaining skills that allow me to share more accurately. Between my upbringing and my skillsets, I am a nimble thinker who can MacGyver almost anything into a resource. Creativity and my work give me a voice. It also gave me a way to connect with folks and elevate their voices/ideas.
Like all skills, creativity is a tool. The way I think and approach situations or problems has given me the opportunity to work with remarkable organizations and individuals. I’ve gained a deeper understanding of myself and my place in the world through art. There are moments when I’m working on something where I can feel the amorphous components I’ve been pondering slide into place. They slip together in a satisfying ‘ah-ha!’ moment. Creativity serves as the connective tissue. Being creative has also given me a deeper appreciation, respect, and connection with God, the Creator.
Gaining these skills from many different places, I’ve met so many wonderful people. Being an artist gives me the opportunity to expand my community. I had the privilege to attend graduate school and was blessed with an incredible cohort. While making work, digging into research, and living life together we built a network of people we know, trust, and can depend on. Having people who are willing to critique your work, hold you accountable, and act as a resource are invaluable. I am so grateful for these folks.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://hattiephillips.com
- Instagram: @hattiephillipsart
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hattie-phillips
