Pati Hill: Separating Color

“Separating Color” is an exhibition curated by Svea Williams ’23 as part of their archival apprenticeship processing the Pati Hill Collection. Throughout the semester they became particularly interested in Hill’s use of color and motion in her later work and chose to focus on these elements.

The exhibition title refers to the process of color separation by which an image is divided into three “process” colors – cyan, magenta, and yellow – which, when combined with a black “key” layer, produce a full color CMYK image. Though Hill is well known for her work with black and white IBM copiers, she experimented extensively with color toner and began working with a full-color copier in the 1990s. The images in this exhibition were produced using a copier that scanned the image once for each process color, giving Hill time to shift the object between each pass and create a sense of movement.