Hollywood Stars, 2024
Rubbings on mulberry paper
45 by 38 inches
My work is drawn to symbols and motifs appearing in the constantly changing urban landscape that visualize personal and collective histories. Lately, I have shifted my investigation of Los Angeles from the photographic to the tangible, pressing the surfaces of the city directly to paper with pigment. The Hollywood Walk of Fame projects the glamour of the entertainment industry through its terrazzo-and-brass laden sidewalk designs that extend out from the intersection of Hollywood and Vine and are named in celebration of Hollywood stars. Once the home of Hollywood production during the 1920’s, the area went into rapid decline during the 60’s when the industry scattered across Los Angeles. The Walk of Fame was created at that time as a monument to myth-making and an attempt to project Hollywood fantasy onto the surfaces of the city. I am drawn to the anonymity of empty and broken stars appearing along the walk. They mark the imperfections of time passing and register the unfulfilled promise of the future. Utilizing the vocabulary of “grave-rubbing,” everyday history is saved from the pretenses of Hollywood and restored to the realities of the pedestrian. The rubbings are less perfect and more mediated than photographs yet like photography there is tension between the subjective and objective character in the rubbings.
— Stephen Hilger