Artist hopes works raise questions, thoughts

Sandra Hilson is constantly painting in her mind, thinking about what her next creation might be. Using a homemade mix of oils and acrylics, she applies color to canvas and glass. The medium produces a glass-like effect and appears three-dimensional.

“Her style is ‘abstract crashing into impressionism,’ ” said musician Fabian Medina, who often accompanies Hilson’s displays and is her agent. Playing the djembe (West African drum) alongside singer/guitar player Terry Roberts, their music adds to the ambiance of Hilson’s work. Reminiscent of the beatnik era, Hilson’s shows evoke a time when people behaved and dressed unconventionally and were inclined to exotic philosophizing and extreme self-expression.

Hilson’s work gets people thinking, questioning and discussing what might or might not be.

“I hope,” she said, “that when you view my art, it takes you to that place where your mind can create a pleasurable experience…thinking ‘I can see this or that.’ “

Hilson, 53, started painting in 1980 with the help of her mother. “She was very talented and gifted,” said Hilson, “she always told me to paint outside the lines, to be myself, and to create my art to visually challenge the thought process.”

Her mother became ill from cancer, survived, and recently died from Alzheimer’s. Now, Hilson battles cancer. Diagnosed about two years ago with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, she has learned to live with the pain and the fear. “I want to focus on my art instead of my illness,” she said.

Besides creating, showing and selling art, she also owns a business. Hilson Janitorial has been going strong for 18 years. She has 24 employees and in 1996, she was awarded the “Woman of Achievement Award” for professional and civic accomplishments from the Columbia Basin area. She also owned an art gallery, the Hilson Gallery, in downtown Spokane for a year. She met Medina there, and they became friends.

Medina, 43, has long been an art appreciator and a musician. Exposed to music at a young age, he had posters of Glenn Miller and Gene Krupa on his bedroom wall while most kids favored Chicago or Led Zeppelin. At 17, he became active in L.A. bands and played the Hollywood circuit until he was 34. He had his fill of big city life and moved to Spokane where his wife’s parents had retired.

At church, he met Terry Roberts, an ordained minister and musician. They began playing together as a Worship Music Duo and also as a blues band, 12 Bar Grace, which plays for prisoners at Cottonwood Penitentiary and at other Eastern Washington events. Their next gig is March 11 at the Spokane Opera House. “I’m a songwriter and a singer,” Roberts said, “maybe I can bless someone by enriching their evening, by ennobling their viewpoint beyond the trap of this two-dimensional world we seem to get enslaved in.”

Hilson’s next showing, accompanied by Roberts and Medina, will be at the Spokane Valley Holiday Inn Express, 9920 E. Mission Ave., during a Greater Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce open house on Thursday from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. You can also see Hilson’s work at the Artist Tree and Hotel Lusso, both downtown.