Donna Hitchcock is Pinnacle Artist of the Month
A chance encounter with an exhibition of masks three years ago
has led Donna Hitchcock to turn the age-old art into new mode of
personal expression.
Donna Hitchcock is Pinnacle Artist of the Month
A chance encounter with an exhibition of masks three years ago has led Donna Hitchcock to turn the age-old art into new mode of personal expression.
“I was at Old City Hall in Gilroy for something and ran into a cultural display featuring masks and drum music. When I put on one of the masks and started moving to the music, people stopped and stared,” Hitchcock said. “I discovered that I had total control with the mask. I gave life to the mask, but it in turn gave me a new identity. I was so intrigued with the concept that I got a video from the library on mask making.”
A display of Hitchcock’s masks can be seen through this month in the show case windows of The Pinnacle in downtown Gilroy.
Also, Hitchcock will exhibit a half-dozen 24X30-inch computer-altered photo portraits in black, white and red of women whom she says “are in a journey of self-realization.”
The photos, Hitchcock says, “are emotional portraits showing women in a phase of life. Women who have seen the portraits have told me, ‘I’ve felt like that before.”’
Among the masks are pieces she made for an off-beat Gavilan College student production of Sleeping Beauty, and a series of masks with a Renaissance theme that she has submitted for possible use at next year’s Medicis Ball, the fundraiser for the sister-county cultural exchange between Santa Clara County and the province of Florence, Italy.
Hitchcock’s masks consist of a cheesecloth foundation covered with plaster of Paris, which she decorates with coral, plants, broken glass or icons such as a tiny cross to create a theme or mood.
The Renaissance series masks are decorated with beads to resemble medieval armor, complete with the corresponding patina. One female warrior whose face bear scars of battle also wears a trinket in the shape of a heart as a nose ring.
“The heart says that although she’s seen hardships in life, she still is capable of expressing love. She’s saying, ‘I wear armor, but my heart is out there,”’ Hitchcock said. “If you look at them closely, they look back at you and seem to say, ‘I’ve never been able to tell my story,’ You feel connected to an era, but you don’t know why.”
Artistic expression came to her naturally as a child, said Hitchcock, who was born and reared in Jamestown, N.Y. near Buffalo. She dropped out of high school in her sophomore year. Since then, she has explored on her own black and white photography, sculpture, poetry and music. She also has 18 un-produced screenplays, including works of suspense, dramas, musicals and children’s works.
The range of artistic endeavors she has embraced fits Hitchcock’s belief that “you don’t choose art, art chooses you.”
Hitchcock is anything but discouraged.
“I know I’m artistic,” she said.
Except for a one-semester attempt at higher education in Michigan, Hitchcock didn’t return to the classroom until age 47 when she enrolled at Gavilan.
Now, at 51, with a two-year-old second marriage, four children over the age of consent and two grandchildren, Hitchcock has been accepted at Mills College in Oakland to study inter-media arts – a combination of theater and film. She had been accepted for this fall, but deferred enrollment until 2003 for personal reasons.
At Mills, one of her projects will be an autobiographical film she has titled I’ve Got Everything Blue for a Boy. The title refers to her mother’s early coolness brought on by the disappointment of not having a male offspring.
If Hitchcock, who sees life as continuous change, has a goal, it’s to create a teaching gallery.
“I’d like to take emerging artists from inception through creation to production to marketing. I’d like to get people back in touch with their authentic selves. Creativity in art is the vehicle,” Hitchcock said.
Right now, self-realization for Hitchcock is creating masks that, she says, transports wearer and viewer to another plane. The mask, known in pre-historic cave paintings, hides the identity of the wearer, but it opens the way to self-identify of the same, Hitchcock said.
The artwork can be seen through November in the front office of The Pinnacle, 7451 Monterey St., Gilroy.
