Hillary I. Johnson
 
Hillary Irene Johnson is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator whose work moves among photography, moving image, handmade paper, installation, and contemplative practice. Her work examines mortality, memory, domestic space, ecological fragility, and the often-overlooked relationships between human bodies and the material world.
 
Working with natural light, duration, repetition, and labor-intensive processes, Johnson creates objects and installations that register encounters with weather, time, and place. Her practice is grounded in slow attention and in the belief that making can offer another way of knowing, one that is embodied, relational, and resistant to extraction.
 
Johnson holds MFAs in Photography and Writing and is currently a Teaching Scholar in Photography at the University of Notre Dame. She is based between Chicago and South Bend, Indiana.
 
The Clothesline begins with a simple domestic ritual: hanging laundry outdoors and waiting for weather, light, and time to complete the work. It also recalls the childhood wonder and play that can gather around the magical space of the clothesline, a place of shifting forms, suspended fabrics, and imaginative possibility, now re-encountered from the perspective of adulthood.
 
In the black-and-white video, clothing moves slowly between visibility and disappearance, its subtle shifts unfolding in a space where almost nothing seems to happen, yet time, attention, and presence are continually changing. Influenced by the sensibility of Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows, the work attends to the quiet gradations between light and darkness, and to the way shadow and light gather in and around a space. The artist’s humming enters as an intimate, bodily measure of time, extending the stillness while making it palpable. The video is projected onto a suspended sheet of handmade paper, where the image is softened and diffused by the paper’s translucent fibers. The screen is not neutral. It is porous, fragile, and responsive, more like a membrane than a fixed surface, allowing light and shadow to become material conditions of the work.
 
The work considers what is lost when ordinary acts are surrendered to machines and systems built around speed, convenience, and consumption. It is not an argument for nostalgia, but an invitation to reconsider sufficiency: the quiet knowledge contained in repetitive labor, the body’s relationship to material, and our direct dependence upon sun, wind, gravity, and time.
 
Here, the clothesline becomes both threshold and instrument, a place where the domestic opens onto the elemental, where childhood wonder persists within adult memory, and where an everyday act becomes a form of attention.
 
 
 
The Clothesline, 2026Single-channel black-and-white video with sound, rear projection on handmade Philippine gampi paper1 minute, 59 seconds; dimensions variable

Edition of 3 + 1 artist’s proof
Edition 1/3: $5,000
Edition 2/3: $6,000
Edition 3/3: $7,000

The artist’s proof is not currently offered for sale.
 
The purchase includes
Exhibition-quality video file and archival master
Sound file
One handmade Philippine gampi projection screen fabricated by the artist
Signed and numbered certificate of authenticity
Installation and display instructions
Technical specifications for projection, sound, lighting, looping, and suspension
The right to exhibit the purchased edition of the work
 
Copyright and reproduction rights remain with the artist.
 
Equipment
 
The projector, media player, speakers, suspension hardware, and other electronic equipment are not included in the purchase price unless separately negotiated. The installation instructions identify the equipment and conditions required for an authentic presentation of the work.
 
Replacement of the paper component
 
The handmade Philippine gampi projection screen is an integral and intentionally fragile component of the artwork. If it becomes damaged or unsuitable for exhibition, the owner may request an authorized replacement fabricated or approved by the artist.
 
Replacement costs, including materials, artist labor, packing, and shipping, are the responsibility of the owner and will be determined at the time of replacement. The current replacement cost is estimated at $1,200, plus packing and shipping. This amount may be adjusted in the future to reflect changes in material and labor costs.
 
Any damaged screen must be returned to the artist or formally retired according to the artist’s instructions. An authorized replacement remains part of the original edition and does not constitute an additional edition of the work. Unauthorized substitution or fabrication of the projection screen is not considered an authentic presentation of the artwork. Replacement is subject to the artist’s availability and the continued availability of appropriate materials.