Hilary Tolan

Hilary Tolan takes viewers into a world where organic materials- grasses, roots, and rock- coexist alongside their stand-ins, silk and plastic replicas of nature. The works are transformed by manipulation, arrangement, and a blending of the organic and the synthetic. Fabric flowers are wax coated, and exist alongside organic nature. Tolan exploits images and objects of fragmented nature and its possible meanings. She explores the fact that nature which was once alive and embedded in an environment, that existed as a part of a system, is now extracted and defunct of its original purpose. Tolan asks the viewer to consider the nature of time. In her work, she reflects the desire to keep and save things as seen in the “Vanitas” acrylic boxes. Thoughts of memory, imagined landscapes, and longing pervade much of its quiet beauty.

Hilary Tolan is a Boston area artist. She completed her Master's in Art Education in the Artist/Teacher program at Massachusetts College of Art in 2002 and she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Purchase College, New York in 1994. Ms. Tolan has been a member of the Kingston Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts since 2002. For her 2006 solo exhibit titled "Beloved", Ms. Tolan received reviews from the Boston Globe, the Boston Phoenix, and a spotlight review in Art New England. She has been a resident at the Byrdcliff Artist colony at the Woodstock Guild in New York in 2002 and 2005. In the summer of 2008 Ms. Tolan attended a summer residency at The Hambidge Center, GA. Hilary creates her work using a range of materials including drawing, printmaking, photography, sculpture and installation. Her third solo exhibition in Boston was in May of 2008.

To view more work from her 2008 exhibit, please visit the link:
www.drwservice.com/hilary_tolan/index.htm