Glass Houses 25: Hillerbrand+Magsamen

This is a complete traditional family portrait that includes our children, dogs (Onyx and Penny) and chicken (Chocolate) in the not-so-traditional setting of our garage. The garage was the setting of Accumulation and we also use it for developing new projects and of course, storing the lawn mower.

The doorway was filled with rolled up blankets and clothes from our closets, which were then photographed both on the inside and outside. The photographs were printed on polar fleece blankets that we ordered from Walmart. Here we sit in our living room, playing on computers with the filled doorway behind us.

Madeleine sits in her room, which was the set of the video Whole, where we cut holes into the walls and doors of our home with hammers and saws and then climbed through them from room to room. The video is finished, but the holes in the walls are still there.

We use our entire house as a studio: to shoot videos and photographs in, to construct sculptural installations in and to edit and manage our art practice. Here we are sitting at the work computer amidst the lights and other equipment. Behind us is a photograph from the House/hold series of our dog, Penny, titled Cerebus.

Emmett plays with his Legos on the coffee table because the kitchen table in the background has been absorbed into an art project of stuff wrapped up into a mountain. We began working with piles of stuff in our house with our video Accumulation, where we created a pile of stuff in the garage and climbed up it.

This is a view of the interior of our garage with a photograph of a 6-foot in diameter ball of stuff. These photographs were printed on polar fleece blankets as part of the Comfort series.

The backyard is often home to art supplies for us such as discarded children’s toys. The bright molded plastic toys have been used in numerous videos and photographs.