 Raised primarily in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Hilary grew up in a lush, rural landscape of looming redwood forests, deep-mountain mischief, and a number of inspired elders. Her mother (Brenda Laurel), coming from a decades long background in theater, graciously brought along her young daughters on some of the earliest explorations into virtual reality (The Placeholder Project) and the tail-end adventures of the touring Grateful Dead. Inquisition and a tumbling sense of connection was further inspired by time spent with godfather and experiential explorer Timothy Leary and summers spent at Wavy Gravy's circus and performing arts camp (Winnarainbow) on the Hog Farm in the sun-baked meadows and oak groves of northern California. It was as a highschool sophomore at the Los Altos Learning Community, building her own curriculum under the guidance of visionary director Gary Bacon (who started the program in 1969) and guests like spiritual teacher Ram Dass, that she became immersed in local activism and research. Getting her hands dirty in internships with permaculture theory and farming in tandem with study of sustainability and deforestation, she worked regularly with Acterra, formerly Bay Area Action, in Palo Alto; At 16, she was one of the youngest activists with Earth First! to occupy the platforms erected in the old growth forests of southern Oregon and later in northern California, where she created her first documentary short film. Around the time also dancing under choreographers causing a ruckus in Bay Area hip hop, she was also involved in work with Books Not Bars and heartily engaged in the consciousness-centered music scene of the region, from Micheal Franti and Spearhead to Mendocino-based piano prodigy Jason Serfling, to the deep underground hip hop building in the South Bay.
Nico Lopez), writing, and singing on the streets in mitte. Varying adventures over the following few years led her, to her surprise, back to school - studying photography at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where her mother served as the chairperson for graduate Media Design. Living in an old cabin of Leary's in Sierra Madre Canyon, it was here she honed her interest in meaningful imagery as well as a terrible discomfort with the confines of "preparing" to work, and redirecting to lighting courses time preferably spent in the company of music. As fate would have it, a four-show gig as photographer for internationally-rooted, New York-based gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello quickly unfurled into a more realistic kind of education, and under the cover of night, she rearranged the tracks and left Southern California indefinately, joining the band on tour and jump starting a different kind of photographic evolution. |
Over the last two years she has lived and worked with performers running the gamut from prog rockers Dredg and The Mars Volta to the American vaudeville road show revival with Eddy Joe Cotton (Hobo) and the Yard Dogs Road Show; Australian heavies Beasts of Bourbon to SXSW darlings The Dallas Crane; from the unfurling genius of Joanna Newsom and family and those magical mountains, to the fierce, indefatigable, hybrid punk explorations of New York's gypsy-punks Gogol Bordello and Irish/American savages Flogging Molly, and the border-decimating endeavors of international music DJs, with New York's Mehanata (Bulgarian Bar) DJs, to her own endeavors (as DJ Hilary Kiddo in San Francisco and New York, and co-producer of San Francisco's monthly Bengalo parties). One of the official photographers for 2007's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, CA, she caught the incendiary return of Rage Against the Machine and a slice of the snowballing transcendance of the Arcade Fire before
returning to New York to continue to get personal with some still busy members of the pioneering New York Dolls, and the bourgeoning revival of backwoods honky-tonk as it makes a wild new residence in punk rock in Brooklyn. Of Swedish, Cherokee and Creole descent, and aging into an increasing pull toward those American roots, she is working toward several upcoming photographic digs into further technologically removed, consciously created and Indigenous communities in America and abroad. Her images have been published in Anthem magazine, Deep Tapioca magazine, Happy magazine, The L Magazine (New York), AP (alternative press) magazine, and promotional publications for Ameoba music, Interscope Records, Shoot To Kill Music, Side One Dummy Records, and the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. She has shown her work at Muddy Waters Cafe in San Francisco, Caffe' Pergolesi in Santa Cruz (both one month installations), Santa Cruz Skate Co. (6-month window display), and was a featured artist at Le Petit Trianon Theatre in San Jose (Urban Art showcase for Deep Tapioca magazine). Her most recent exhibitions, both in San Francisco, were hosted at OxenRose Salon (2 months), and Tartine Bakery and Cafe (6 weeks). She is presently based in the Bay Area and New York.
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