Hans Gill
Seneca, Wisconsin
 

Hans Gill recently retired from a successful 30-year career designing and fabricating exhibits for museums. Before that his career included cattle ranching, military service, teaching, parks service and picture framing.

“I reflect my life in my art,” this sculptor, painter and professional picture framer says. And his multi-faceted background has given him a rich life to reflect on. His art is “a blueprint of how I see the universe structured and how I interact with it.”

Born in 1945 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Hans says he was “always fooling around with stuff” and began to be interested in art during an eighth-grade art class. Later, during his senior year at West Anchorage High School, he got involved in theater, working in set design, painting scrims and backdrops. He carried this interest with him to Hanover College in Madison, Indiana.   Though a biology major, he also worked in design and theater, experience pivotal to his ultimate goals.

He left college after a year and spent four years in the United States Air Force Security Service.  During that time he began painting and wire sculpture and exhibited at the River Walk Art Show in San Antonio, Texas. He also had a one-man show at the Kelly Air Force Base Credit Union. 

Following his military service Hans began serious art study at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. There he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1972 and, in 1974, a Masters in Fine Art with a concentration in sculpture.

Next came a year as an instructor in the art department of Eastern Kentucky University, and a summer season working with the Department of Parks in Boonesboro, Kentucky, where he ran the wood shop and pottery and began fabricating exhibits.  He spent a year in Rochester, New York, in the picture-framing business and in 1978 moved to the Lake County Discovery Museum in Wauconda, Illinois. The museum had recently opened and, during his time there, became nationally accredited and one of the ten most popular destinations in Lake County.

From 1978 to 2005 Hans designed and built museum exhibits. He installed artifacts and maintained exhibits and display spaces throughout the museum and in other parts of the county. He also continued developing his own repertoire of sculpture and painting, and has exhibited his work in Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin.

“I create things that don’t exist in my life – BECAUSE they don’t exist,” Hans says, explaining his passion for creating his unusual and thought-provoking pieces, many of them using found objects.

 One piece, The Earth Mother Goddess sculpture, is based on the carved limestone figure known as Venus of Willendorf (c. 24,000-22,000 BCE). It is believed that the Goddess figures symbolized the strong values of nurturing and compassion present in the matriarchal cultures of the time. Hans carved his sculpture in wood and, using a rubber mold, reproduces it in cast stone. One of the goddess sculptures was auctioned at the recent Driftless Area Art Festival fundraiser in April in Soldiers Grove.

Hans Gill’s wife, Judy, is a photographer whose architectural photographs have been published in Old House Journal. Currently, her primary interest is in scenic and wildlife photography.

Upon his retirement from Lake County in 2005, Hans and Judy moved their studios to their 40-acre farmstead just outside Seneca, Wisconsin. They love the scenery, the friendly people, and the active arts community.

Hans’ studio, in a busy workshop a stone’s throw from the couple’s old farmhouse, is eclectic, with work and storage areas full of materials as well as pieces he just can’t part with. One favorite piece, “To the Goddess,” is a cast bronze sculpture that Hans describes as “an altar celebrating the birth of creativity through the human spirit.”

Other works currently in process include a series of hammered sheet metal pieces based on prehistoric fish fossils.  Hans is also doing a series of abstract sculptures that “have the imaginary power to transmit tranquil energy into the environment.”

Multi-Media, Etc., 608-734-3389
artguyhans@centurytel.net

Interview by Sharon Murphy
Photos by Judy Gill