Talkin' Ugly with Tyler Hildebrand

Meet Tyler Hildebrand is CMNSH’s first fine artist lecturer.

CMNSH: I’ve found in my own work that I’ve had to excavate back down to “ugly,” after absorbing so many images from art history and school. There’s a rawness and immediacy that ugliness can convey sort of effortlessly, but it feels like artists and designers alike are steered away from embracing it and swept toward refinement instead. Have you always worked with ugliness, or did you have to (re)discover it?

TH: I worked as an illustrator for several years painting cute things for magazines, and did a lot of commission work of lovely city scenes. I really came to a breaking point, I knew that I had to move on and do work that I wanted to do, whether I would make money at it or not. When I started scavenging the rough Memphis landscape for trash and debris to create a giant man-eating clown sculpture, I knew I was on the right track.

CMNSH: It seems like you favor the oscillation between ugliness and beauty over a more polarized view of those ideas as a dichotomy. Is there an idea that encompasses both for you?

TH: I made a film called Wallace; much of it was based off a real Memphis musician Wally Ford. There is not a whole lot that is pretty about Wallace as a man, his situation, his actions, his fate. But there is a tenderness and a strange wisdom there, and humor. These are often things that emerge out of mistakes and tragedies.

CMNSH: “Ugly” seems to be a sort of vehicle or catalyst of progress in the creative arts- Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring in music, for example- what do you think gives Ugliness that power?

TH: There is a reality in ugliness that exists, no pretension. There is also a curiosity. The ugly, rough, grotesque, is always more interesting to me than something elegant and tasteful, whether it be conceptually or formally. It’s not like that for everyone, but it is for me, always. Refinement bores me to death.

CMNSH: When was the first time you were drawn to something ugly?

TH: I grew up in the suburbs of Cincinnati. My father was a veteran Cincinnati cop and my mother was crime news reporter.  I heard stories about shootouts and fights and murders, I always wanted to know more. I wanted the details and what these people looked like. I would ask my parents to drive me through the bad neighborhoods; I got to see hookers and drug dealers. At a young age I understood there was something outside of my cushy home, it intrigued me.  

Join us January 30th at Impact Hub for Tyler’s talk on our theme this month- you guessed it- UGLY.