Bayou City Art Festival Downtown 2008
Featured Artist
JD Hillberry
http://www.jdhillberry.com/

M.C. Escher-Inspired J.D. Hillberry Offers New Twist to Festival Patrons

Award-winning artist J.D. Hillberry garners critical acclaim by fooling the human eye. Named featured artist of the Bayou City Art Festival Downtown, Hillberry personalizes art in the style of M. C. Escher, pushing the limits of realism in his distinctive trompe l'oeil ("trick the eye") drawings; his photo realistic objects appear three-dimensional in a two-dimensional, black and white world. Hillberry's art will be showcased at the 12th Annual Bayou City Art Festival Downtown Saturday and Sunday, October 18-19.

In a new twist for the Festival, J.D. is creating a trompe l'oeil self-portrait where the subject. J.D., is drawing on a blank piece of art paper. In the image, the J.D. figure wears the official Bayou City Art Festival Downtown T-shirt, which, of course, showcases his self-portrait drawing on the blank paper. It's an image within an image. On the original artwork, available for sale at the Festival, the paper is intentionally left blank so that it may be customized for the patron who purchases the piece. i.e. to add the art collector's name, for instance.)

"M.C. Escher has been a big influence on me and my work since my childhood," said the Westminster, Colorado-based Hillberry, who describes the noted 20th century woodcut and etching genius as his hero. "I've studied Escher's ideas of 2-D versus 3-D and have expanded them to include trompe l'oeil aspects. Escher never tried to convince the viewer that his work contained three-dimensional objects. I've tried to combine some of his basic ideas with aspects of trompe l'oeil," he explained." Coincidentally, Hillberry shares Escher's birthday, June 17.

The juried Bayou City Art Festival Downtown, held 10 a.m. to 6 .m. both days, will transform the urban expanses in front of City Hall and around Hermann Square on Walker, Bagby and McKinney Street and Sam Houston Park, into a magical outdoor art colony with 300 artists from throughout the U.S. and the world.

Self-taught, Hillberry put himself through a rigorous curriculum of anatomy and perspective studies to develop his drawing techniques. "I didn't plan on a career in art," says the music major graduate whose first career was performing in touring bands as a drummer and singer. He performed at night and cultivated his visual art talents during the day.

"Even with all of the techniques I use to speed up the drawing process, some of my original drawings have taken over three months to complete. Consequently, I only produce four or five new pieces a year," said Hillberry, who employs charcoal, graphite and carbon pencils, along with adept interplays of light, reflection and shadows in his works. He also produces limited edition reproductions using either offset lithography or the Giclee printing process for full-size and mini print reproductions.

Hillberry has garnered more than 36 awards in juried art exhibitions throughout Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico, including nine "Best of Show" awards, nine "First Place" awards and six "Best of Media" awards. His 1999 "how-to" book, Drawing Realistic Textures in Pencil (Northlight Books), which sold more than 50,000 copies worldwide, recently was translated into Chinese. An original Hillberry trompe l'loeil drawing was published in the book, Incredible Optical Illusions (Quarto Publications, London).