The photographs in Upstate artist Joe Hiltabidel’s upcoming exhibition, “Evolve,” at the Artists Collective | Spartanburg began with a dream about cereal, but also represent his personal evolution in life. The exhibit will be July 2 through 27 in Gallery II of ACS.
“This entire body of work began with a single dream about cereal,” Hiltabidel says. “When I woke up, I told my wife, Shelly, I was going to try to recreate what I saw in the dream and that became my photograph ‘Evolve.’ Each subsequent piece in this exhibit was directly inspired by the true love story I share with my wife, favorite childhood memories or the positive side of humanity left in the world.”
The exhibit represents Hiltabidel’s “personal evolution in life, in my artwork, in the art world and in my relationships,” he says. “From the experience of past relationships to living in complete fulfillment; from never creating artwork to traveling as a creative artist, selling my artwork to thousands of people; also the literal lifecycle from the way youthful love can transform a person, to the love that comes back through the act of caregiving as we age.
“Each piece in the collection reflects a stage of my evolution, blending whimsy and reality to create a narrative that is both deeply personal and universally relatable.”
Most of the photographs feature heart-shaped cereal interacting with Hiltabidel’s hand-built miniatures, “telling a story of growth, resilience and the transformative power of love,” he says. “Part of the exhibit compares my first whimsical piece against my most recent one.”
Hiltabidel hopes visitors to “‘feel’ more than ‘see’” when they enter the exhibit, and he wants their first reaction to be “happiness and joy. Also, I hope they feel a spark to create something or to evolve a part of their own life.
“I want people to find what makes them happy and chase it until the very end,” he adds. “You have one life, and it is too fleeting to settle for unhappiness.”
Hiltabidel says he previously photographed “traditional landscapes,” focusing on mountains and waterfalls. After his cereal dream and creating the first photo inspired by it, “I had so much fun creating the piece and seeing people’s reaction to it that I abandoned my interest in landscape photography to pursue a style of photography that makes me happy instead of trying to create artwork for others. Chasing this path gave me personal joy and I quickly realized this unusual body of work resonates with others who shared my style of imagination or who appreciated a ‘less is more’ approach to photography. What started as a dream involving cereal has evolved into the entire whimsical body of work you see here today.
“I consider some of these pieces to be the ‘ultimate conversation starters,’” he adds. His works include props he builds, often using common household items such as matchsticks, pieces of jewelry or fiber to build miniatures and create staged scenes in a cube flooded with light.
Hiltabidel, a native of northeast Ohio, has lived in the Upstate for 30 years. At age 36, he began attending Furman University, graduating in 2015 after eight years of night school. A course there taught by photographer Bryan Hiott led to his love of photography and the purchase of his first camera. Later, after seeing another former professor at an event selling her jewelry, he was inspired to begin selling his photos; he and Shelly have attended more than 100 art events in 10 states since the first in 2016, selling thousands of his photos.