June Rise Ramble
Hills Snyder: New Work in Montana
March 26 – April 26, 1987
Custer County Art Center
Miles City, Montana
Nobody knows, from sea to shining sea, why we are having all this trouble with our republic.
--- Thomas McGuane
Rolling Target, Incurator, Dashboard Sandwich, Genre Jumper, Pilot Hole, Ranch O’ The Beings In Flux,
Church of The Utterly Orthoparadox, Garage Optimism, Erewhon Is Almost Nowhere Backwards, Minotaur
Is The Maze, June Rise Ramble…
It is all these things that make you mine.
--- The Uniques, at The Village Swinger, Lubbock, Texas, Ca. 1967
Rumble, dumble, crumble… --- Max Snyder
Of Thieves, Kings and Wanderers
By Laurie Rufe
More than a century ago, an enterprising Texas named Dudley H. Snyder left his imprint on a burgeoning
cattle empire that extended from the Pecos top the vast plains and basins of Colorado, Wyoming and
Montana. He carved a noble legacy of intoxicating imagery that became a portal to discovery for Hills
Snyder, an artist-descendent. Parallel paths, yet separate planes of vision, mark the journals of D.H.
and his great-grandson; forever intertwining, forever asunder. The baron exclaimed, “The profit is not
made when you sell the horse, but when you buy the horse.” (1) The desperado cries, “It’s not the
bullet that kills you, it’s the hole.” (2)
1984 was a pivotal year in a metamorphosis that took hold of Snyder. Exponents of that change now
course through his art like ancestral blood. It was in that year that he accepted a residency at the Ucross
Foundation in Ucross, Wyoming –-- a place where reflections of his lineage are mirrored upon the land, and
in 1984, Hills met Gordon McConnell. The doorway to Montana was open, waiting in confident expectation
for a crossed king, a wandering thief, to come rushing in and preside of the June Rise Ramble. The Rise
references not only a point of land that occurs at the confluence of the Tongue and Yellowstone Rivers
(where the artist makes his home) but also celebrates an ancient pilgrimage by trappers destined for St.
Louis, their treasure-laden barges released on the river when the June waters rise. 1984 also marked the
opportunity to participate in Texas On My Mind: Contemporary Visions of The Lone Star State, an
exhibition conceived by Becky Duvall Reese (a curator at the Huntington Art Gallery, University of
Texas, Austin) and traveled by rail to ten Texas cities. It was here that the tip of the new imagery
was revealed.
Scattered elements of the epic and contemporary West are now woven throughout Hills’ drawings and
constructions. Coupled with an iconography and narrative that synthesize the artist’s wit, poetic
metaphor and back beat rhythm/romanticism, these elements beckon from their black obelisk-like
facades –-- draw you in by tractor beam --- embrace you --- then spin you upwards toward the
western skies. As artist-in-residence at the Custer County Art Center, Hills transfers this mysticism
directly to his students --- enhancing thought and perception; charged with a spirituality that blends
sorcerer, desperado, Dylanesque philosopher…and June Rise Rambler!
1. D,H. Snyder
2. Laurie Anderson
Worlds Within Worlds: The Art of Hills Snyder
By Gordon McConnell
The Auctioneer of Parting
His “Going, going, gone”
Shouts even from the Crucifix
And brings his Hammer down ---
He only sells the Wilderness,
The prices of Despair
Range from a single human Heart
To two --- not any more ---
--- Emily Dickinson, c. 1884
STARWHEELS
Look up (or out) at the stars some night. You can probably see them better around Miles City than you
could in other parts of the world. (Satellites are out tonight) But you’d better stand outside the discount
department store, drive-through glare of Main Street for awhile. Turn off the TV. Rub the sleep from
your eyes.
What is it that you see? Spy satellites the size of eighteen-wheelers catching the sun ---
faint, fugitive beacons at 35,000 feet, frail signals, planeloads, tubular projectiles, full of inter-coastal
snobs (not even thinking as ther cross “fly over” land where you live --- meteorites, big chunks of cosmic
dust struck up like matches against the stratosphere --- planets, stars, above all the stars
--- the ancient, generic luminous points --- suns, comets, galaxies, novas.
FERTILE CRESCENT
Kathy Shiroki (a hyphenated, predecessor, artist-in-the-schools)_ last year gave Hills Snyder a red and
yellow plastic powder horn/horn, a child’s toy/instrument --- a pun already taken to several degrees
of physical and metaphorical remove from pre-school, unconscious fantasy, injection-molded,
propaganda-of-the kid.
Look at the toy in its sanguine elevation --- a war bonneted Indian (target) skulks along the arc of
the horn. A dual personality, his yellow-profiled persona carries a gun. But if you go around the corner,
crouch down and look up through the red profile on the other side, you might see (as Hills Snyder sees)
a spike-haired musician duck-0walking to glory with a Fender Stratocaster --- instrument of choice
of Jimi Hendrix and subsequent generations of rock fantasists --- an axe, sword and shield or hammer
of the gods. (Oh him again…talking backwards like back masked angel/hittin’ chords sittin’ on six strands
of wire fence) Heroes yowl through the ages, trumpeting in futile, storied glory --- Christ, Crockett, Kennedy
--- the blasphemy is relentlessly projected and received, burned into our willing minds. (You might be the
one-eyed jack around here, but I’ve seen the other side of your face.) Intersecting and overlapping arcs
guide us to the launch window, the specific point of view where the parts resolve themselves into the
whole constellation. We hang --- on the horns of a dilemma --- like druids, waiting for the red moon
revelation to burn silhouettes through the stones.
DELTA BLUES (AND GREENS AND REDS AND YELLOWS)
The vanishing point must be somewhere behind your eyes. Trust the artist to find that point. Stand in the
“right” place. The pieces will surely fit. Trust him. His map is a platform, the tower a pulpit. Inside, a
fluid vortex leaks out a scrawling misplaced river line (a labyrinth on a napkin) where east and west,
“where real and ideal rub up against one another,” This shadow republic --- forty eight states and Baja
(its Latin stiletto blade offsetting Florida, announcing, “there’s a lot more to America” Ion the pulpit, a
garish recitation of creed:
ANGLE / MELODY
AMNESIA / ANGEL
MEMORY / AMERICA
It’s a nocturnal apparition, like Las Vegas, or Spielberg’s Mother Ship animating and illuminating the night
over Devil’s Tower.
Meanwhile, the archetypal, ubiquitous guitar arches over a patented Snyder cubic planet; and the
bigger hero does his balancing act. We learn that the Minotaur is the maze and that “It’s not the bullet
that kills you it’s the hole.”
There’s a simultaneous unraveling of themes, strands connected, going in different directions, in multiple
dimensions. There’s “a character writing all this, his rambling/overstated tone meant to sound
like someone who’s backing you into a corner…an unhinged character.” There are words to be looked
at and letters to be felt, objects to be read, visions to be seen. Look up, and out, and in.
June Rise Ramble
Vigil/Vanishing Point/Meanwhile, 1986
51 X 135 X 29 inches
mixed media on paper and wood, miniatures, brick, string, bullet hole
Hero As Scene Through Scream, 1986
32 X 24 inches
pencil on paper
All Alone In Romance, 1986
32 X 24 inches
pencil on paper
Y Stone Panorama, 1986
20 X 26
pencil on paper
Canoe Exits Minotaur, 1986
23 X 12 X 7
pencil, metal leaf and epoxy on paper, wood
Trojan Horse of Love, 1987
58 X 18 X 31
wood, mixed media
Hangin’ On The Horns of A Bad Moon, 1987
43 X 22 X 24
painted wood, wire, plastic powder horn
Achilles’ Next Request, 1987
48 X 14 X 18
wood, mixed media
The Friction Line, 1987
65 X 74 X 50
travelogue photo, mixed media on wood, paper, and clay
Thief With Fence, 1987
15 X 12 X 5
wood, mixed media
with Max Snyder:
Siegecraft Advance, 1987
49 X 16 X 12
arrows, droid, wagon, mask, mixed media on wood and clay
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