Sculptor and Printmaker

My work concerns water and its protection. There is no new water. The life source we are drinking today is billions of years old. Our bodies are over seventy percent water. Our food is dependent on water. The Chinese word for water also means power. Wars have been fought over the rights to this liquid. We cannot ignore civilization's determination to pollute and desecrate water.

Geometric shapes appear in my earliest works and continue while interwoven with organic forms. My early life in Chicago with my Swedish immigrant parents and my adult life in the San Francisco Bay Area have influenced my work, evoking abstract realities of architecture, waterfalls, mountains, landscapes, seaforms and the human figure. I include my concern for the purity of our water sources in all my work.

Born in Chicago to Swedish immigrant parents, I graduated from Augustana Coillege in Rock Island, Illinois. My degree there was supplemented by study at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, the Yoshida Hanga Academy in Tokyo, Japan, and the Marble and Art Institute in Pietrasanta, Italy. I am the founder and director of the Blue Bay Press and am a member of the Pacific Rim Sculptors Group and the California Society of Printmakers.

My works have been exhibited nationally and internationally in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Chicago, Hawaii, Sweden, Denmark, Israel, Belgium, Bangkok, Paris, London, Mexico City, Berlin and Singapore. Recent venues include the Claudia Chapline Gallery (Stinson Beach, California), the Thacher Gallery of the University of San Francisco and the Richmond Art Center, Richmond, California.

Collections include: Adobe Systems, Advanced Micro Devices, Augustana College Museum of Art, Bancroft-Whitney, Bank of Hawaii, Dean Witter Reynolds, Deloitte & Touche LLP, Equitable Life Assurance Company, Ernst & Young, Fibreboard Corporation, Illinois Bell Telephone Company, Kaiser Permanente Hospitals, Calvin Klein Cosmetics, Lever Brothers Company, Merrill Lynch, Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Miller Brewing Company, Municipality of Maalot-Tarshiha (Israel), Pacific Bell Directory, Productos Vallejo (Spain), Prudential Insurance Company, Sun Hills Country Club (Japan), Sunset Developments Company, Swissre/North American Reinsurance Company, 'Tleerhuys Galerij (Belgium), University of California Berkeley, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Visa.

Maj-Britt Hilstrom

e-mail: majbritthilstrom@yahoo.com
web site: www.maj-britthilstrom.com