We are deeply saddened by the recent passing of artist John Hiltunen, a loyal friend and longtime member of the Creative Growth community. Artists and staff will remember John’s kindness, generosity, love of food, and rolling supply cart (he was VERY specific about his preferred art supplies).
John joined Creative Growth in 2003, but it was during a Paul Butler Collage Party in 2007 when he discovered his love for collage and signature approach—juxtaposing animals and humans from fashion and natural history magazines. John also created imaginative video media projects such as the Jon Bon trilogy. His work gained acclaim, exhibiting in fairs internationally and galleries, including Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco; White Columns, New York; Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York; and the San Francisco International Airport.
Continue to read about John Hiltunen below.
At Creative Growth, artist John Hiltunen will be remembered as much for the hundreds of delightful collages he forged by combining magazine cutouts of fashion models with images of animal faces as for his caring demeanor and focus on friendship. In the Studio, John enjoyed a fatherly role and regularly found ways to share the benefits he received because of the fame he achieved late in life.
When John joined Creative Growth in 2003, he had been cajoled to do so by friends, and was mostly motivated by his social instincts—he wanted to hang out with friends who were already doing work there. He experimented with various media, especially wood, but struggled to find satisfaction in his work. All that changed in 2007 when Canadian artist Paul Butler hosted The Collage Party at Creative Growth in 2007 and John discovered his raison d’etre in the art world: juxtaposing cutout images of fashion models with the heads of animals placed against a landscape clipped from a calendar.
The rest, as they say, is history.
John enjoyed a meteoric rise in recognition for his dynamic mash-ups as he continued to produce a large body of work, refining his practice and discovering a wide range of possibilities using seemingly limited moves. His work was included in over thirty shows in just ten years, including John Hiltunen +1 organized by Matthew Higgs in 2012 at Paule Anglim Gallery and a solo show in 2017 at Good Luck Gallery in Los Angeles. John received the prestigious Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award in 2013 and Books for All Press published his monograph released at New York Art Book Fair in 2016.
“I’ve never seen a bad collage by John. He was so gifted with these juxtapositions,” said Matthew Higgs, Director and Chief Curator of White Columns who curated a show featuring work by John in 2012. “He was one of the great collage artists of the modern era, along with (Kurt) Schwitters and Hannah Hoch. He had this extraordinary skill, talent, with what seemed to be quite limited materials, quite a reductive palette.”
John was born in 1949 in Kentucky but grew up in Texas. He was married to Carol Hiltunen, also an artist at Creative Growth. Always clad in suspenders, John was jovial and thoughtful and known for floating into classes to check up on people who were special to him. He shared calendars with fellow artist Dan Miller, who loves to draw on them, and other specific supplies that he noticed peers liked. But it was a large cooler full of food to share with a posse for lunch that was a signature gesture.
The Tiffany prize came with money and John wasted no time deciding how to spend that unexpected haul. He took his friends and their caregivers to Disneyland.
John enjoyed making his collages as much as people enjoy looking at them. He approached the work playfully, often laughing at his own creations. “There were moments when he had sheer delight in making his work,” said Michael Hall, a former Studio Instructor and current Board Member. “It was contagious watching that.”
John’s story embodies the mission of Creative Growth.
“Sometimes you just need a little time, encouragement, resources, a push” said Michael Hall. “He came in as a non-artist. For many years, he just participated in the community there. At some point, he found his visual voice and when you couple that with having the resources to get that voice out there, when you actually lend encouragement and support, look what someone can do. Imagine what more could happen in the world if there was more of that.”