ABOUT
Jillian Hirsch is an artist and educator residing in the Capital Region of New York. She received her BFA in 2010 from the New Hampshire Institute of Art and her MFA in 2020 from The University of Tennessee. Currently, she is the Director of Arts Education at the Arts Center of the Capital Region and an Adjunct Instructor in the Fine Arts Department at Sage College. Prior to her position at the Arts Center, Jillian was a high school art teacher at the L&N STEM Academy and pottery instructor at Mighty Mud in Knoxville, Tennessee. When she is not in the studio or classroom, Jillian enjoys gardening, beekeeping, and reading Si-Fi.
ARTIST STATEMENT
The Anthropocene is a proposed name for our current geological epoch; a time on Earth characterized by human-caused planetary change. Without much regard for the many other forms of life that inhabit this planet, our species has been shaping landscapes, extracting resources, and generating waste at an exponential rate. Although the magnitude of this collective impact can be measured and mapped on a geological scale, it is much harder to perceive (or even care about) these changes through the tiny lens of our day to day life. Too often the environmental baseline shifts to a future that is more depleted than before.
As an artist and educator in the 21st Century, I feel an overwhelming responsibility to make work in response to human-caused environmental changes while critiquing the problematic cultural idea of “the natural world.” As we continue to extensively shape the planet, I believe we can no longer afford to think of nature as something unadulterated and separate from humans. My research rejects the all-but-mythical romantic view of nature as a human-less wilderness brimming with native flora and fauna in favor of a more empathetic and inclusive view that recognizes the complex and layered beauty of novel, untraditional, and damaged ecosystems. My artwork embarrasses the vitality of weeds, the kinship of pests, and the ingenuity invasive species. Both my studio and social practice aims to cultivate a greater sense of ecological literacy and environmental imagination while asking the viewer to reconsider their place in the world. Through multimedia artwork, community engagement, and cross-displinary collaboration, my practice is a sincere attempt to find hope for a multi-species future on a finite planet.