Marcia Wood Goes Digital: Getting Smashed with Gregg Hill

Gregg Hill, Belief #222 - Blue

I’ve had people say: ‘You know, you talk a lot about meditation and all that, but you’re smashing the hell out of these things! You’re putting anger into the world.’ … And I am: I’m taking that anger and transforming it.
—Gregg Hill

Local galleries are getting increasingly savvy when it comes to self-published promotion. Take for instance this video interview with artist Gregg Hill—an episode of what will likely become an ongoing series of interviews, commissioned by and for Marcia Wood Gallery.

To be honest, when Hill’s Smashed exhibition opened this February, I wasn’t exactly bowled over. But seeing the artist discuss his work in the video—on his own terms, comfortably, and during a quiet moment separated from the clamor and chaos of opening night—helps put the exhibition in a much better light. Not only does the interview explain the sculptures’ origin, but it also supplements the gallery experience in a way that only video can: We can actually see Hill’s process, which involved industrial-sized machinery literally smashing each metallic cylinder into the shape of a prune.

Although the production quality differs, Marcia Wood’s strategy isn’t unlike Beep Beep Gallery’s studio visit interview with BORN over a month ago. Both galleries were especially interested in the comfort level of their artists: You can see in Gregg Hill’s video, as well as BORN’s, that extra care was taken to make each artist feel at home, in their own way, and to allow them ample room for expanding and elucidating their vision.

Especially when you add the artist profiles on WonderRoot TV (not to mention occasional interviews by VIMBY), the arena for local video promotion just got bigger.

Tags: Beep Beep Gallery, Born, Gregg Hill, Marcia Wood Gallery, Studio Visits, video, VIMBY, WonderRoot TV