Art in the Family: For the Hilmers clan, creativity must be something genetic

Her dad, my father-in-law, Walter Hilmers Jr. also owns his own business, Hilmers Studios. His Dallas-based company specializes in patent illustration, and has worked on a number of high-profile projects himself, including sneaker designs for Nike and drawings of military equipment for the United States Army. He also draws stunningly beautiful flowers in a similar graphic style that completely turn the medium on its head.

And her brother, Walter’s son, Aaron Hilmers, not only worked alongside his dad at Hilmers Studios for years, but has dabbled in just about every art form imaginable, from drawing, painting, and printmaking, to sculpture, wood burning and weaving, each new series demonstrating an equally high level of proficiency and quality.

He even created a comic at one point that changed his life forever (more on that later).

But this column isn’t really about bragging on how amazing my wife and in-laws are (at least not entirely). It’s about how Walter, Aaron, and Gretchen have spent their lives not only steeped in creativity, but also supporting each other throughout.

“It was interesting,” said Walter of their home life growing up. “Aaron’s mother was a really good artist. Gretchen’s mother did art on occasion too. My sister Lucile is an artist. So it was kind of in the family. It was always art.”

Aaron agreed.

“They always encouraged me to be creative,” he said. “The first thing I every remember doing was art. I was maybe three years old and I had painted I think like Winnie the Pooh and Kermit the Frog. I think dad still has the painting in a box somewhere.”

Gretchen literally grew up in the darkroom, working side-by-side with her pops.

“I pulled up a chair and she’d take the black and white prints from the developer to the stop to the fix and then to the rinse,” Walter recalled. “I seem to remember trying to teach [Gretchen] to roll film onto the metal reels.”

I can attest to the fact that my wife still has a powerful and positive response to the smell of photographic fix, which is, as Walter described it, “strongly pungent.” And those early moments would later inspire Gretchen to ultimately pursue photography and to creating her highly successful business.

“I know there are some photos that I took when I was a wee lass,” she said. “But I think I really tried to learn more about it for my high school project. We had to choose something to learn in order to graduate, it was our senior project, and I chose photography.”

Although Gretchen doesn’t take photographs for a living (she still does as a part of her personal artistic practice), she’s found that her upbringing has played a major role in what she’s been able to achieve.

“My career path kind of evolved into working on other people’s stuff,” she noted. “But I think that background in art is what serves me so well now with my business.

“It’s interesting how many careers there are in the art field. And yet the only career that seems to be defined by ‘Artist’ is you hang stuff up in a gallery and you sell that stuff. But that’s not what being an artist is mainly.”

As mentioned above, Aaron’s artistic path has been less linear than his sister’s, as he has tended to, in his words, “mine the idea for what it’s worth and then I move on.”

But out of all of the numerous projects he’s engaged in, it was his comic strip “Kenny,” about a loveable if rough-around-the-edges redneck, that has had perhaps the most profound impact on his life.

“Basically he [Kenny] was just something that kind sprung out of an offhand comment when I was out on a date,” Aaron explained. “And I bounced some ideas off a friend of mine and I just drew a comic and it went from there.”

After working on the comic strip for about six months, he took it online and, by chance, the work ended up connecting with a woman in Finland named Inari who he would eventually marry.

“I started sending out Myspace friend requests to people in all kinds of countries and my [now] wife was one of them,” Aaron laughed. “And at some point I just said, ‘Hey, you seem like an interesting person,’ and we just kind of connected from there.”

Thanks to the relationship, Aaron ended up moving from Dallas to the small city of Raahe in Finland, where he recently became a permanent resident, a step in the process towards full citizenship. He’s also getting ready to have his second solo exhibition in his adoptive home, titled “Space is the Place.”

Throughout the twists and turns of all three of the Hilmers’ lives, they’ve always encouraged each other. I can still remember Gretchen’s excitement when, while we waited in an airport for a connecting flight to who knows where, her dad called her to say that he’d gotten the Nike job. Walter himself has the lovable propensity to overuse the exclamation, “Wow!” when discussing his kids (or my) achievements. And Aaron is constantly sharing what his fellow family members are up to on social media.

“I think it’s really important to support your kids in no matter what they do,” opined Walter. “Certainly in the arts.”

“It doesn’t matter how it turns out,” he added. “It doesn’t matter that the first piece might not be good or the first piece might be great. It’s important that they keep trying.”

If you’d like to learn more about the creative endeavors of the Hilmers family, visit www.hilmersstudios.com, www.aaronhilmers.com, or https://g-tou.com. You can also find Aaron and Gretchen on Instragram @yolks73 and @g_tou respectively.

Art off the Air is a companion piece to the radio program “Art on the Air” hosted by Rob Hessler and Gretchen Hilmers. The column can also be found at savannahnow.com/entertainment.

The show airs Wednesdays from 3-4pm on WRUU 107.5 FM Savannah and at WRUU.org.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Art in the Family: For the Hilmers clan, creativity must be something genetic