Biography Sculptures
A prolific and versatile artist, Richard Hill has created over 20,000 pieces of art. His art has been exhibited in the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. He has had exhibitions in Atlanta, New York City, Bitburg, Germany, Recife, and even Brazil. His work has also been purchased for inclusion in corporate collections by companies like Georgia Power, Arthur Anderson, The Kessler Enterprise, as well as in many private collections.
Born outside of New Orleans, Richard majored in drawing and painting at the University of Georgia. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in art education and then went on to earn a Master’s degree in drawing and painting. During that time, he also became interested in photography.
Although Richard has enjoyed success in drawing, painting and photography, over the past twenty years he has concentrated his real efforts on sculpture. Both of his parents passed away within one year of each other, and he soon after started having dreams of his mother appearing in front of him showing him books of art; she would turn the pages, showing him drawings, paintings and sculpture. “She somehow would indicate to me that I was to make sculpture” he said. In his work, Richard uses spheres to represent God and creates pieces that transcend a specific time in history.
Richard's most well-known sculpture is the steel sculpture known as the Kessler Campanile which was designed for the Georgia Institute of Technology and was the focal point of the Olympic Village during the 1996 Atlanta games. “[Georgia] Tech wanted something tall, something modern, a beacon, a central focal point; they wanted something that represented technology and the future” He decided to create a contemporary obelisk, consisting of 6,000 pieces and taking 60 people and one year to construct. Not long after completing the piece, Georgia Tech changed its logo to match the top of the Campanile.
During the past two decades, Hill has created over 1,000 three-dimensional pieces ranging in size from two inches to the eighty-foot Kessler Campanile. He has worked in marble, granite, steel, glass, bronze, and wood. Most of his work falls into a variety of recurring themes. Next to spheres, portals are probably his most recurring theme. The central portal, or hole represents perfection. The portal also represents a vehicle through which to pass, metaphorically, into another dimension, level or world – a more perfect world.
Hill feels that one problem with American culture is that we are always trying to create something new. “I don’t care if it looks completely new or old. If you make every attempt to create something you’ve never seen before, what you do in the process is to eliminate the aesthetic values which are universal.”
