Arts Roll Call Episode 21: rocks, birds, celebs–the curious journey of artist Sarah Hillman
Welcome to Episode 21 of Arts Roll Call–a podcast for the arts curious. In this episode, host Robin Miner-Swartz talks with artist and writer, Sarah Hillman about her array of mediums and interests as an artist–from rock art to birds and celebrity portraits. They explore how her childhood guided her curiosity and what it means to be part of the arts community in Greater Lansing.
Meet Sarah
Lansing-based multimedia artist Sarah Hillman was born in Cape Town, South Africa, raised in Windhoek, Namibia, and moved permanently to Michigan after graduating high school. She created her first piece of art at age two (it was a portrait of Rumpelstiltskin, and looked like a sad potato) and has been making art ever since. Since then, she’s gotten much better at it, and these days very few of her portraits look like potatoes at all.
Sarah enjoys working in a variety of mediums, including watercolor, digital painting, ceramic sculpture, and ‘rock art’ (which is the fine art of finding rocks on the beach and gluing them onto mat boards to make pictures!) She has also written and illustrated two children’s books of her own and illustrated several for other writers as well.
She loves to experiment, but the subjects of her work are pretty constant – nature and people. Her father, a geographer and a devoted outdoorsman, has always loved wildlife and nature with a passion. He passed that love on to all of his daughters, in one form or another, and it’s probably why trees and flowers crop up in Sarah’s art so often. Her mother is a people person who finds everyone she meets to be fascinating. She taught Sarah to value relationships and treasure people, and this has influenced Sarah’s enjoyment of painting portraits and capturing the everyday moments of life. She loves using her art to celebrate the beauty of the natural world, and tell stories about people and their lives. Check out the podcast!
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