On view through June 28, 2025. Gallery admission is free.
Artist as Agent of Change
As an artist, is it possible to create something new without drawing upon some portion of the collective human experience, and would it be necessary to do so for one to be of service to his or her contemporaries?
Living this inquiry, visionary futurist Vandorn Hinnant sees himself working not in isolation, but in concert and in tandem with others across an unseen and immeasurable expanse of space/time. He understands his life’s journey as a ‘visionary futurist’ to be part of an ever-expanding circle of human creativity pointing him and others towards deeper insight into the nature of Being. He sees this invisible collaboration as essential to the raising of consciousness in the world.
Vandorn Hinnant, 14 January 2015
At the center of each body of my work is a focus on communication.
Beginning with my earliest attempts at recording inner visions I was having since birth, my intent has been to convey a message embodied in these inner vision experiences. These visual records have been my way of talking about the layers of multidimensional experience I have witnessed. Words seldom say what images convey.
“Dreaming With Open Eyes: the Shamanic Spirit in Twentieth Century Art”, authored by Michael Tucker (1992), is a significant treatise on ‘the creative response’; a term coined by Roger Lipsey, author of “AN ART OF OUR OWN: Concerning the Spiritual in 20th Century Art” (1988).
I see my long journey as a creative to be an experience of dreaming with open eyes. To call upon the spirit of Jose’ Arguelles’ brilliant thesis “The Transformative Vision”, I will say that my life is an engagement with ‘the transformative vision’ as an intentional walk colored with attempts to out picture visions I consider to be of an edifying nature to humankind.
It is only in modern times that the human condition has been reduced to identification with only that which can be seen with the physical eyes or mechanically measured with physical instruments. The inner visions represented in this body of work are, in fact, communications from ‘the beyond’ presented as a possible link for the viewer into strata of consciousness where ancestral wisdom and memory abide.
The images presented in this exhibition represent four major series I have been engaged with since my youth when I began with attempts at visually recording what I was seeing with my inner eye.
1. Metaphysical Realism Series (works in this series were previously in two different categories: the Organic Abstractions Series and the Geometric Abstractions Series)
The Metaphysical Realism Series is a new term that i have created as a category of art. This series addresses the notion that what is considered of a metaphysical nature is being referenced in the imagery in this series. Works in this series were previously in two different categories: the Organic Abstractions Series and the Geometric Abstractions Series.
The Organic Abstractions Series began during my early childhood. As a pre teenager, I was busy attempting to record inner visions I was experiencing. At age 14, I began my attempts at painting these landscapes of the inner eye.
As the years passed, and I became acclimated to art history, it occurred to me that all of my imagery had to do with attempts to record and make shareable all that I had experienced with my inner visions. I discovered that European artists such as Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky wrote in an effort to convey with their contemporaries some of what their experience was as a recorder of these images.
As observation of my work continued, it became clear to me that communication was central to my work and I began to create imagery graphically expressive of dialogue between individuals. The image HEALING TOUCHES is one example of this.
After my March 2019 visit to the Guggenheim Museum to view PAINTINGS FOR THE FUTURE; art by Hilma af Klint, I realized that my life experience held many curious parallels to af Klint’s.
The Geometric Abstractions Series began several years prior to my fateful 1989 meeting with Robert L. Powell, Sr. After meeting Powell, I switched from drawing geometric figures freehand to using the tools of Euclidean geometric construction; a compass and a straightedge. Perhaps a third of the works in this exhibition are crafted using these tools. Well into my association with Powell’s PRACTICAL SCIENCE INSTITUTE, in what he had named the G. R. Lomanitz Visual Mathematics Laboratory, I began to see connections between my understandings of the twin aspects of consciousness, light and sound, and the scientific pursuits of many who had operated as physicists in the 1900s.
The titles of these images often hint at some of what is embodied in the work. Ancient knowledge has been met by our modern scientific observations. Light and sound are now identified with sentience. The long wait for this to become public has ended and we are set to experience a great liberation in the way we choose to relate to one another. The ancient notion of ‘self’ as ‘other’ is echoed in what science has unveiled for the world to see.
2. Portal Series
There is an overlap between the Portal Series and the Metaphysical Realities (Organic Abstractions) Series. Imagery in these two series has to do with either a single sentient being broadcasting a message or signal, or a dialogue between two sentient beings.
3. Dreams and Soul Travel Series
As a college student, an instructor gave us the assignment to create two collages for each day we met in class. That was three days a week adding up to six collages a week.
We were to choose a subject for the series of collages and I chose ‘Dreams and Soul Travel’ since this had been the main impetus behind my creations.
4. Ancestor Memorial Series
After becoming a member of the NAAHBCU (National Alliance of Artists from HBCUs), I quickly acclimated to the group’s focus to exhibit works identified with the history of Africans in America. This is where I began to focus on creating works that speak to this history and my Ancestor Memorials Series was birthed. In 2018, I was commissioned to create a public art work for the Greensboro Greenway. I chose to immortalize the notion of UNITED WE STAND, TOGETHER WE RISE in twin monuments bearing text from three of the residents who lived in the community these monuments were installed in.
The three memorials in this exhibition are a sample of wall mounted works paying homage to ancestors.
In my heart and mind these images are not abstractions. They are soul note recordings of moments in space/time.
Many of these compositions grow out of a direct interface with higher dimensional frequencies of consciousness that some think of and identify with as the ancestral realms.
Geometry is the language of Nature and of the all-embracing consciousness that permeates (makes up) the universe.
One can think of these images as visual recordings of states of consciousness… as messages from deep within and simultaneously beyond the physical realm.
The ancient ones were aware of the realms within, above, and beyond this physical domain and acted accordingly.
The inner knowing that our ancestors walked with is still alive within each of us. The portal of awareness to this knowing is inner stillness and inner silence. What I have created in the form of visual images can be viewed as signposts pointing in the direction of that wellspring of ancient wisdom waiting to be visited by those choosing to enter that domain.
The Hardin Center’s gallery is open Monday through Thursday and Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm and Friday from 10 am to 1 pm. Admission is free.
Exhibition organized through the support of Katharine T. Carter and Associates.
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