As administered by the Office of Academic Affairs at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, the Dwight Frederic Boyden Gallery and Collection bolster the College’s mission and vision and strive to increase opportunities to engage departments across the liberal arts curriculum. The Gallery and Collection support the College’s initiatives and events from past and present to impact the future; to strengthen the integrated curriculum of the College, which investigates broad outcomes across many disciplines of the liberal arts; and to act as the College’s Gallery as a space to discover and create complex connections through the visual arts and material culture.
Metropolis Scrolling with Eli Hill
August 30 – November 20, 2021
Opening Reception and Artist’s Talk: Weds Sep 8 5-6:30pm
Recent SMCM alum, Elijah Hill ‘21, excites and entices visitors to join him on an unorthodox journey with six large-scale paintings and twenty works on paper. Until November 20, Boyden Gallery is alive with neon electricity, while distinctly stratified with layers of complexity – surprising details await discovery.
The exhibition incorporates in-process video projection with music selected by the artist, so all are part of Metropolis Scrolling with Eli Hill. Using a plethora of media, Eli translates his experience as a young black man raised in Washington, DC into imagery and sound. Relying on personal, distinct symbolism, he weaves a non-linear story of joy, chaos, resolve, and determination. This story captures mundane imagery and pop culture references to highlight humor, absurdity, and survival through gesture, marking, color, symbolic representation, and scale.
This body of work was created during a competitive summer 2021 St. Mary’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship under the mentorship of Professor Carrie Patterson and made possible by the Office of the Provost and the St. Mary’s Foundation. Boyden Gallery and Collection is supported in part by the Maryland State Arts Council (msac.org).
