Parrish Road Show 2019: Candace Hill Montgomery
Hills & Valleys

Now in its eighth year, Parrish Road Show is the Museum’s off-site project designed to encourage engagement and interaction between artists and the communities outside the Museum’s walls. Each year, selected artists work together with the Parrish and partner venues to create new work and to provide unusual opportunities for visitors to see and experience art in unexpected places, from public parks and highways to historical sites and community centers.

For the 2019 Parrish Road Show, artist Candace Hill Montgomery presents Hills & Valleys, an exhibition of recent weavings at The Sag Harbor Whaling & Historical Museum, on view from May 17-June 16.

Candace Hill Montgomery (American, b. 1945) makes weavings that explore the many ways in which threads can tell stories and make cultural commentary. Using a wide variety of fibers—linen, cashmere, cotton, wool, even horsehair—she creates complex layers of allegories and fables that reference her own life as well as current social and political challenges. While creating this visual dialogue about race, feminism, poverty, and the environment, Hill Montgomery integrates subtle inner observations into the weaves. Made on handmade looms, the works are mounted on fabricated hangers, found objects, or vintage farm equipment from the South that reference her family’s heritage. Her partnership with the Sag Harbor Whaling & Historical Museum resonates with her visits to the museum as a child during summer vacations spent in Sag Harbor with her family.

Hill Montgomery’s work has been presented in exhibitions at major arts institutions, including the Bronx Museum for the Arts, New Museum, Printed Matter, Artists Space, Franklin Furnace, Fashion Moda, and Creative Time, among others. She was an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem (1979), and a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (1985) and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (1981). In 1985, Hill Montgomery curated a group exhibition including Lorna Simpson with Lucy R. Lippard titled Working Women/Working Artists/Working Together at Gallery 1199. Her work is in the Digital Archive of the New Museum. Her essays have been published in the Women’s Art Journal. She received a master’s degree in Art Education from Hunter College.

 Parrish Road Show 2019 is made possible, in part, by the generous support of The Dorothy Lichtenstein ArtsReach Fund, established by Agnes Gund; Deborah Buck; Sandy and Stephen Perlbinder; Jane Wesman and Donald Savelson; Leslie Rose Close; and Joni Sternbach.