Elizabeth Hill (pronouns: she/her) is a queer artist that lives in the Snoqualmie Valley. She is a painter, potter and installation artist who also plays banjo in the band Elizabeth Hill and the Valley Folk.
Growing up in the 1960s and early 1970s, Elizabeth went by the nickname her family gave her, Betsy. In her childhood people would often comment that she was different from other girls in terms of many of her interests. She liked to fish, go on adventures with her brothers, and spent what was considered an unreasonable amount of time in the forest and playing music.
There were many negotiations with the school, the church and the grandparents about things like wearing pants instead of dresses, playing baseball instead of jump rope, and having too many scratches on her legs from spending days in the woods. Back then there wasn’t much discussion about it beyond being a Tomboy. So for younger people, she wants to say, do what you enjoy and don’t worry too much about the negotiations going on around you. It’s not really your issue. Don’t worry too much about labels, they change with time. Just be yourself and enjoy your life.
Facebook: Lake Joy Cabin Studios
World Organizer
Pottery sculpture
Exhibited at Rainbow on the Eastside 2024
“When I was a child and I experienced chaos associated with trauma, I would disappear into the woods and emerge in a big sloping field that had tall grass and plants with woody stems. The plants with woody stems frequently developed orbs that were created by insects. In my mind I would imagine these woody orbs floating into the sky and spinning until they developed wing like appendages that would spread order and safety to my world. I made this World Organizer sculpture based on those childhood visions. The image also appears in some of my paintings.”
Volcanic Seed Pod
Pottery sculpture
Exhibited at Rainbow on the Eastside 2023
One of the things that Elizabeth studies are the generalized structures in nature and how those structures support life and also have been used as models for the built environment. In this piece “Volcanic Seed Pod”, she is thinking about the similar form of some seed pods giving life to plants, volcanoes giving life to earth, and women giving life to babies. It seems this form holds power of creation of something more than itself. And that is magical.