Somerville Open Studios
Somerville, MA
May 4-5, 2013
Courtesy of the artist
Everywhere one turns in Hilary Scott’s amazingly adorned Winter Hill home – which he opens during Somerville Open Studios – there is something witty and striking. The whole effect is overwhelmingly entertaining and one wonders what it must be like to live among all this stuff which is so vividly imaginative and cartoonlike.
Courtesy of the artist
Staring up collectively from the floor at a TV screen are a bunch of gaping-mouthed bald heads, as though silently thunderstruck by what they see. An equivalent head sits near the door, its wide mouth receiving the daily mail.
Courtesy of the artist
A flock of geese ride along the ceiling atop the stairs and the dining room wall has a hovering faux multi-deer taxidermy, its six heads gaping and smiling out of the mount.
Courtesy of the artist
Scott has done these sculptures for various sorts of exhibitions and theatrical productions for years but, as well, works as an official photographer for the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood. It appears that his fanciful, sculptural side and his serious, documentarian side manage their boundaries consistently.
by Hilary Scott
Courtesy of the artist
Some may remember the TV show Pee Wee’s Playhouse (1986-1990) notable for its abundance of weird and interesting stuff that was a huge hit with artists as well as with others who got off on its trippy sculptural inventions.
Hilary Scott’s place has some of that feel, but one notices as one ventures through it an encompassing warmth of atmosphere that pulls the imaginative escapades into its embrace.
One sees that the open mouthed TV viewers, the multiheaded moose and the wild geese are all happily cohabitating in what might otherwise just be a vividly warm Victorian domestic setting. Ultimately, the effect is gently jarring, a tender poke in the ribs.
More on Eclectic Sculpture by Hilary Scott
– BADMan
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