Maggy Rozycki Hiltner: Vantage Point

In April 2014, Hiltner was selected to create an installation for the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum’s Dr. Ruth Tan Lim Project Room. As an embroidery artist, filling 72 linear feet of wall space with hand-stitched imagery would be her largest project to date. She began by designing an idealized landscape with a big blue sky, green grass and puffy white clouds. Researching ways of depicting cloud forms led her to think about clouds as water vapor and then water vapor as greenhouse gas. Other clouds — volcanic plumes, mushroom clouds, emissions from factories and puffs rising from the cooling towers of nuclear reactors — drew her attention as well. The resulting piece, “Vantage Point,” traveled from Mesa to other venues, changing shape to fit each one. In 2018, Hiltner stitched an additional 39 linear feet to make the piece site-specific for the Holter Art Museum in Helena, Montana.