Artist Bio.

My name is Emma (Turnbaugh) Hillard. I was born in the spring of 1982. I am an artist, and my focus is in collage art. I also enjoy dabbling in acrylic based painting, fabrics (sewing and knitting) and less often I experiment with drawings.

I had an interesting upbringing. I was home-schooled by my wonderful mother until 3rd grade. I then attended various Boston public schools. In 7th grade I took a test and was admitted into the prestigious Boston Latin High School, where I stayed until I graduated.

I took Art as an elective in 8th grade, where I learned the basics of drawing and painting with water color and acrylics. At the time this was one of only 2 art classes offered in my high school, so I decided to look at other options available me.

Around this time I began covering my bedroom walls with concert flyers, interesting quotes, pictures and stories, street signs and whatever else I found to be witty, unusual, and just plain interesting to stare at. This was my first collage that I took pride in. With in a few years time, I ran out of blank wall space and ended up layering the new images over old ones. My room became a massive and visually striking piece of collage art. Often when friends visited my room, they would spend most of their time fixated on the 4 walls, figuring out what had been added since they visited last, and trying to absorb everything the images on the walls had to say. Unfortunately it was dismantled when I moved to the west coast at age 20, but I saved some of my favorite clippings from the massive collage that I still consider my favorite to date.

As for a formal education in art, I attended after school classes at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts during the 1996-1997 school years. I learned how to manipulate new materials, such as a pen and ink, charcoal, pastels and clay.

That summer I started working for Artists for Humanity and remained there until the spring of 1999. I loved working in the Painting and Sculpture departments. AFH hosts large art gallery exhibits about 3 times a year to feature the works of their teenage employees. It was a great experience to able to share my art with a large audience and some of my sculptures even ended up being displayed in public places such as banks and a convention center.

When I graduated high school in 2000, I decided to continue my education at Northeastern University, in Boston. At the time I thought it would be wise to pursue a career outside of the arts, so I wouldn't become one of the "starving artist" types. Unfortunately after spending a year and a half, I was about to lose my mind.

I decided to transfer to Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. Because I was transferring from a non-art school, I ended up taking mostly general art classes, which I now appreciate. They gave me a solid education of many different techniques. One eye opening drawing class even gave me my introduction to collage used as an art form rather than a craft.

In the spring of 2003, I was 20 years old and decided to move to Seattle. I had grown very comfortable with Boston, and had felt a need to explore a new place. In addition, the love of my life had already moved there and extended me an open invitation to join him. After settling down in Seattle I have focused on creating new and different pieces of art while educating myself through trial and error. I enjoy challenging myself with new ideas for themes that I'm unfamiliar with, and I rarely assemble 2 collages in the same way. Also, I try to collect every book that I can find on the subject of collage as an art form. Recently my focus has been on my collaged greeting cards, and I'm slowly turning it into a small business. My cards are currently being sold in 3 stores in New England, (in addition to selling them on this site), and I'm now looking to sell them in a couple of shops around the Pacific Northwest.

I have thousands of inspirations, but I tend to think that my best ideas are the result of random co-incidence. Favorite books and authors, my "pet" adult female iguana that only has 3 legs and is super surly, stereotypes, and the social attitudes of America all inspire me. I have also come up with some fabulous ideas for pieces of art after working with various clients interested in an art commission to be personally tailored to their interests and tastes.

I live just north of the city of Seattle, in Washington State, with my big, surly iguana, and my amazing husband, Devon, who also doubles as my muse.