Hillary Lisa Steel

Hillary Steel is a teacher and artist who specializes in weaving and resist dyeing. She incorporates ikat and shibori (jaspe and amarras) into her hand woven wall pieces. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo. After graduation, she studied textiles via post-baccalaureate course work at Buffalo State College and the University of Pittsburgh as well as through travel to Cote d’Ivoire, Peru, Chile and Mexico. Hillary received a Masters in Teaching degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She has worked in public and private schools in Pennsylvania, Maryland and the Washington DC metropolitan area as an artist in residence, creating site-specific collaborative textiles with students. Currently she is on the faculty of the Potomac School in Virginia. Since 2006, along with colleague Virginia Davis, Hillary has been studying with and documenting the work of Mexican master rebozo weaver Don Evaristo Borboa Casas. They have produced a short film about his work. Hillary’s work has been included in national and international exhibitions – recently on view at the North American Cultural Center in San Jose, Costa Rica, the American Consulate in Tijuana, Mexico and at our Embassy in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Her textiles have been the subject of solo shows at the Glenview Mansion Art Gallery, the Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts, and the Rosewood Centre Arts Gallery, and are included in the book Art on the Edge, Seventeen Contemporary American Artists published by the U.S. Department of State. Her work is held in private and public collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C. She has been a resident of Montgomery County, Maryland since 1994, and maintains a studio in Takoma Park, Washington D.C.