STATEMENT

Jill Hotchkiss (MFA, Pratt Institute) investigates the hidden intelligence of natural systems.

Over decades of observation, her work has focused on dendritic forms—recurring branching structures found in the architecture of trees, roots, mycorrhizal networks, waterways, and biological vascular systems. Across radically different scales, these patterns become an ecological connective tissue: a visual language for interdependence and interconnectedness.

Hotchkiss approaches nature not simply as subject matter, but as method—a model for how the work itself is made.

She has developed a set of hybrid processes unique to her practice that merge classical techniques with mechanical and contemporary digital processes. Observational drawings evolve into “metal drawings” through a method she devised for drawing directly on paper with metal. These images move through further iterations into carved and gilded wood reliefs. Her reductive carving method, modeled on accelerated erosion, removes the wood in layers to reveal its grain, growth, and accumulated history—essentially, the fingerprint of the wood.

The process functions like printmaking in reverse.

Through carving and iterative image-making, the work reveals not only an image, but the embedded spirit and ecological history held within the material—the tree and the larger ecosystem that shaped it over time. These cycles of material transformation echo ecological cycles.

Reflective precious metals—gold, silver, and copper—are used specifically to form the botanical and root systems. Plants absorb light and transform it through photosynthesis into the energy that sustains living growth; Hotchkiss uses luminous metal to point back to this normally invisible interior process and to the plant’s inner light body—its energy. The metal is not simply applied as ornament; it becomes the botanical body itself, shifting with reflected light as the viewer moves around the work, giving the forms a sense of aliveness.

Historically used to sanctify power, gilding is reimagined as a contemporary ecological language rooted in reverence and preservation.

The work asks: must nature be gilded for its preservation? In doing so, Hotchkiss proposes a shift from extraction toward reciprocity, from domination toward participation, and from nature as resource toward nature as kin.

BIO
Jill Hotchkiss (b. Hollywood, Florida) holds an MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY and a BFA from the University of Florida. Her work is held in major public and private collections globally and has been featured in Architectural Digest, Forbes, and Art Basel Magazine. She is a 2026 Artist Innovation Fellow with the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County. Hotchkiss has completed residencies at the School of Visual Arts (NY) and Oolite Arts (Miami), and was commissioned by the City of West Palm Beach for an 80-foot public mural Botanical Preserve in South Olive Park.
She lives and works in Boca Raton, Florida.