Reception: Hilary Nelson: Hard Copy

Best Western is pleased to announce Hard Copy, an installation of sculptures and photography by Hilary Nelson made during their winter residency.

Nelson’s reflection on their residency:

“Recently, my focus within my practice has been on ways that form can indicate time. I have felt a pull towards being able to suggest that a sculpture has existed in, or been built, or made, or born of a certain time, place, or space by the shape it takes. What might that do to my role as the maker? I am looking at forms such as stalactites, which are built up around a hollow tube the diameter of a drop of water, or saguaro cactus, which won’t put out an arm until they are over 50 years old. I am thinking about ways that–as a queer person who came out in their 30s–my shape, my form, will continue to shift and become more true with age and acceptance. The idea of a copy or of doubling or mirroring started to develop in the space. Placing pieces in front of their own photo, making an indoor partner to the window awning, or a hanging ode to the ceiling heater felt like compulsions. Hard Copy suggests ideas of impermanence and preservation: a set of opposites. A hard copy promises to make something real, but the things I make are rarely static. Opposites run rampant in my work. I continually find myself between material and form, image and object, fast and slow, complex and simple, familiar and alien. Vibrating between these things, existing where things are uncertain or precarious. Hard Copy refers to an old technology, something that is now without teleology. It’s shape feels made by a time now gone.”