Here is the story with Robert Hillestad. L announced that they are going to start having an online version so look forward to that. It will be at www.lmagazinelincoln.com. Look for the layout on my writing blog.
Robert Hillestad. By Brian Reetz
Scraps of fabric would come tumbling down from above and land on him or beside him as a young Robert Hillestad played and crawled on the floor of his playroom -- his mother, Martha’s sewing room – in their farming community home outside of Madison, Wisconsin.
It was during World War II and all mothers were home sewers, whether they liked it or not, because buying store bought clothing was out of the question. As the youngest of four children, Robert wasn’t allowed to roam as much as his older siblings, always under the watchful eye of his mother. It’s amazing to think this is what probably brought out the passion for textiles that has led to a long, educational and plentiful journey for this boy, now a man that has a gallery named after him at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
“If there was something inherent in me, if I had affinity to tactile things or maybe these things tumbling down and the proximity to me brought it out,” Hillestad said. “It’s hard to tell what came first. I’ve been fascinated with textiles as long as I can remember.”
From earning a degree in art and design at his home state school (the University of Wisconsin) to trips in Paris and many of the European capitals, along with time on both American coasts, Hillestad’s life has been quite a journey, including 31 years as a teacher at UNL before his retirement as well as his many amazing wall pieces, garments and installations.
Having prepared for a career in apparel design, Hillestad’s journey was changed when he was drafted into the Korean War and spent two years in a foreign land. “When I came back I felt really culturally out of it,” Hillestad said. “I didn’t have a clue of what was going on because all I had seen were uniforms.”
But Hillestad pushed forward and approached his dream from a different perspective. He was hired at Marshall Field’s in Chicago, which was one of the most prestigious department stores in the world, while attending the Art Institute of Chicago at night. He took the position as a buyer at Marshall Field’s because the merchandise was available, he didn’t have to create it and he was a part of the executive training program.
“It was very beneficial because I didn’t have a business background, even though my parents were in business but I didn’t work a day in their store,” Hillestad said. “What got me the job was my background in art. Later on I asked the personnel person that hired me, why they hired me without any business background. They said that they were in business and they could teach me that but that we can’t teach you the other things that take a long time to develop. That probably wouldn’t be the case today. They would probably want a demonstrated record of success in business.”
But even with the excitement that he felt about being in retail, there were aspects of it that became tiresome and Hillestad felt like he needed more. That is when he made one of his biggest moves and decisions of his life. He resigned his job and moved to Paris. “I had always wanted to do that,” Hillestad said, who lived in France from 1963-64. “World War II had been over for a number of years and the economy was good so air transportation was within reason. I went to a fashion school -- one that trains people to work in the fashion houses.” But after some time, Hillestad realized that he couldn’t stay in Europe because it wasn’t easy getting a job. An American could get job offers easily but getting a work permit from the government wasn’t so he decided to return to the States and find a place that had the feel of a European city -- San Francisco.
But a chance phone call finally gave Hillestad, who felt like a man without a country by this point in his life, a place to settle and call home for the rest of his career. Hillestad and UNL professor Dr. Audrey Newton, who had both attended the University of Wisconsin, had kept in touch with a clothing and textiles professor at UW, Hazel Paschall. Both had sent Paschall a Christmas card that year with Newton’s saying they were looking for a professor at UNL while Hillestad’s said that he was in San Francisco but “I probably wouldn’t be here next year, stay tuned.”
“So the woman called me,” Hillestad said of Newton. “It’s amazing what the impact of a telephone call can make. She called me initially and I was working in a design studio and I didn’t have time to take a phone call. She could have interpreted that badly and even with a good reason it can still be a negative. But she called back. My life might have been quite different had she not.”
Hillestad admits that many of his decision are based on intuition, “then I do things and then I find out why I’ve done them in the course of doing them. I think there is quite a bit to intuition if we listen to our minds and bodies. I think society programs us for why we don’t do that but I think it is quite beneficial.” From the moment Hillestad arrived for his interview in Nebraska he could sense the possibilities. He was impressed with the professionalism and the vision of people that he met and there seemed to be an abundance of opportunities. “In a way that seemed very strange because this isn’t a garment producing state or a textiles state but the enthusiasm for design and creating things was impressive,” Hillestad said. He made the move to Nebraska in 1965 and got a quick start in what would be a long career at UNL.
“I didn’t have a master’s degree at that time but I thought, why not,” Hillestad said. “I really didn’t have much to draw on but my experience – but I had a lot because of my retailing experience, I’d lived overseas and I’d been in the military. The department that I was associated with was all about vision and always has been. That was one of the things that excited me. Here I was without a graduate degree and they had the vision. They were very forward looking.”
Hillestad’s career began by teaching a Basic Design course and it made an impact in a lot of different ways. “One was that I found it very beneficial to be teaching the fundamentals because then my students would have them,” Hillestad said. “I taught that course for many, many years and it would have 200 students per semester. I had a lot of students over the years (estimated at more than 4,500). That was a lecture course but I also had labs. I got to know many of the students personally.”
Hillestad, of course, taught other courses as well including Fashion Illustration and Apparel Design, which was different than they taught at most schools. “I learned it in Paris. We worked directly on mannequins, directly with fabrics. Most of the garments in our industry are created on paper with measurements. It is a good efficient way of doing it but working directly on a form with fabric is a different situation. It’s more of an art form.”
As his teaching career evolved he assumed other teaching responsibilities, especially after earning his master’s degree from Drexel University in Philadelphia and his doctorate degree from Ohio State University as he taught courses in the social psychology of clothing. But one of the biggest benefits for his students at UNL were Hillestad’s contacts that remained in Paris. They were one of first academic units to take students to Europe on a study tour. “We had to convince the administration that it wasn’t a shopping tour,” Hillestad said. “It’s not always easy to understand the mechanics of another discipline but they were very receptive and encouraging. I started taking students to Paris and all of the capital cities in Europe. It was a wonderful experience for all of us. It was back when they liked us much more than they do now. I found out how many doors would open with a well-crafted letter from an educational institution. I think most professional people that have been through any struggles know the value of education. They were once in that position themselves. I was blown away from the things we were able to do. We were able to see the collections of all of the big fashion houses. Usually they are quite suspicious because they are afraid people will steal their designs. Every other year we designed a similar one to New York and that was very beneficial because it opened up opportunities for our students. Once they were in New York for a week or 10 days they could envision themselves living there, whereas the idea might have been rather frightening if they hadn’t been there before and most hadn’t.”
Even with his retirement in 1996, Hillestad stays very much committed to the arts in Lincoln. He is on a committee at the Lux Center, is very interested in seeing the Haydon Center survive and of course stays involved with The Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery in the Textiles, Clothing and Design Department at UNL. “The more of those that we can help keep alive the better because it will help bring in people and make Lincoln looked at as a center for the arts,” Hillestad said, who also continues to travel to some of his favorite locales including Paris and London. “We all work very cooperatively together.”
Hillestad was excited and pleased when he was recently honored with the Governor’s Arts Education Award. “I liked the idea of being showcased as an arts educator,” Hillestad said. “I haven’t always been sure that people regarded textiles as one of the arts. I think maybe we are making headway there. Because our clothing is made of textiles it is sometimes played down a bit.”
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