On April 3rd, in Indianapolis, Indiana, I attended the opening of the very first solo art show of Hillary Erin Russell, "becoming". I've been following Hillary's art for about eight years, since she was first starting out as a Photography major at Shepherd. Her art (or HER's art, if you like funny acronyms) covers many of the walls of my house. Hillary, incidentally, is my sister.
Her art deals with pornography, and how it's images can relate to her own feelings, as well as her own personal stories. One of the most striking pieces is a folding table we had bought for her on clearance at Target. In it, she has carved the names of every girl she had a crush on, growing up in the closet in West Virginia. Her art touches a lot on her experience as a lesbian, and it happened that her show was scheduled for the weekend after that law was passed in Indiana allowing for discrimination against gay people by local businesses.
I think that her art was the perfect amount of provocative at the perfect time to really effect culture. She was featured in several local publications, including Indianapolis's biggest gay newsletter. Her opening was packed, and it seemed to garner a really positive response. I think that going out and exhibiting art that deals with lesbian issues, in one piece she used photos from OKCupid and gold-star stickers to obscure faces of the women she met, is very important to create understanding of the struggle of lesbians.
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