(Jennifer Lucy and Hillarey Breedlove)
By Betsy DiJulio
If you recall the Greek myth in which humans were originally created with four arms, four legs, and a head with two faces, you know that Zeus, fearing their power, split them into two separate parts condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves. In the Suffolk art scene, it seems two of those halves found each other and Zeus should indeed be quaking in his sandals.
The Suffolk Art League, a non-profit organization, recently hired Hillarey Breedlove as its Executive Director, while the Suffolk Art Gallery, part of the City of Suffolk, recently hired Jennifer Lucy as its Cultural Arts Coordinator. Not only do these organizations share a building—the historic former library on Bosley Avenue—but they share a vision and philosophy lead by two women with backgrounds that fit together like puzzle pieces.
Breedlove, a military mom of two girls and a practicing artist with a BFA in painting and drawing from the University of TN, brings to the collaboration a studio art and community arts programming background. She cut her teeth on programming and outreach first in the Suffolk Art League’s Art Days summer program and the Visiting Artist Program in the schools. Beginning in the Fall of 2022, she assumed the role of part-time Education Coordinator until a hire from within landed her in her current position.
Lucy, formerly the Curator of Community Engagement at Norfolk’s Hermitage Museum, brings to the partnership a background in art history, curation, and marketing. She earned her MA from VCU in 2018 while flexibly employed full-time at the Herm where she curated exhibitions and filled the marketing role for over 10 years. She left there over a year ago to serve as the Marketing and Public Relations Coordinator for Isle of Wight County where a favorite aspect of her job was exhibition design. But the goal was always to secure a position as a full-time curator. Her husband, who works for the Suffolk library, saw the ad for the Cultural Arts Coordinator position, alerted Lucy, who applied in August, and she assumed her new position in November.
Though half the building is occupied by the League and the other half by the Gallery, that is, in some ways, where the divide ends. Essentially, they rotate their many classes and four exhibitions each per year. The latter are a mix of juried, invitational, group, and individual shows with a decidedly local and regional flavor. In the spring, they collaborate on the largest and longest running juried photography exhibition in Hampton Roads with March 2025 marking the 41st annual. Each year, alternating professors and practicing photographers select and judge entries primarily from Virginia and North Carolina.
Also in the spring, the pair are collaborating on a women artists’ exhibition. The focus was Breedlove’s idea while Lucy, a passionate student of the history of exhibitions, folded in an historical dimension, namely Peggy Guggenheim’s 31 Women exhibition of 1943, which is widely regarded as the first US exhibition of exclusively female artists.
Besides relying on each other, Breedlove works with an Education Coordinator, now full-time, and what she refers to as “a really strong board and volunteers” whose first question is, “How can we help?” Meanwhile, Lucy joins forces with three part-time staff members, all artists. Both women are enthusiastic visionaries who see bright futures bursting with opportunities for their organizations. And both, like employees at virtually every arts organization everywhere, see funding as their greatest challenge. The Gallery is owned and operated by the City and its employees paid by the City, whereas the League is funded primarily through grants, private donations, and earned income via programming and fundraisers.
In addition to their school outreach programs and plans to expand those, the League hosts an antique show in February, an outdoor Earth and Arts Festival on Main Street in the Spring, the first annual Bosley Artists Market modeled after the many Christmas markets Breedlove visited while living in Germany, and the Suffolk Plein Aire Festival. As if that weren’t enough, a big downtown project just may be in the offing if the mural gods are smiling. “I’m so happy I work in a place I love,” she enthuses. “I love being here and love the mission; it fills my art nerd heart.”
Seeing the Gallery as a beautiful blank slate of a space, Lucy is excited about more thematic exhibition opportunities, bringing more people to the Gallery, initiating more dialogue with the community, and creating more interactive opportunities. Long interested in audience research, she is eager to design ways of assessing how people find meaning in art and what the citizens of Suffolk want from their community Gallery. From her perspective, “There is a lot of room and potential for new talent,” citing “women pushing boundaries” in the 31 Women exhibition as but one example.
Come to think of it, “women pushing boundaries” seems to be an apt description of this dynamic duo as they gear up for the next phase of evolution of their partnering organizations. Apollo and Hephaestus might want to take note.
Suffolk Art Gallery
“To the Max: A Juried Exhibition Celebrating Maximalism”
Juried by Ryan Lytle and Clayton Singleton
December 13 – January 24, 2025.
757.514.7284, www.suffolkva.us/1744/Suffolk-Art-Gallery
