Cover story: Yenna Hill

Unblurred lines: Keith Haring’s niece opening own show in Edwardsville

By Jill Moon

jill.moon@hearst.com

EDWARDSVILLE — Yenna Hill is used to being compared to her uncle, the late Keith Haring — and she’s OK with it.

Hill — who will have her first national solo exhibition “Muse User” at Good Weather Gallery, 301 N. Main St., in Edwardsville — will surely talk about her uncle many more times at the exhibit’s opening reception 6-9 p.m. on Saturday.

The works of her uncle have experienced a revival, especially with younger generations interested in pop art and styles that grew from the 1980s New York graffiti subculture.

“I think it’s so cool that younger kids are still into his work,” said Hill, 35, who was nearly 5 years old when Haring, at 31, died Feb. 16, 1990, of AIDS-related complications.

Haring embraced free street and public art early on, drawing bold chalk figures in New York City’s subway centers on blank black advertising spaces. As his popularity grew and he was commissioned to create large-scale colorful murals, he still voluntarily produced public art for hospitals, schools and spaces for children — like his niece, Hill, now a mother of an 11-year-old daughter, Harlow Moon Hill.

“I was wearing his artwork on shirts

growing up, and either people didn’t know it or thought I was really rich,” Hill said with a laugh. She said she worked as a bartender before the pandemic shut things down and is back at it today a couple times a week in Reading, Pennsylvania, where Haring and Hill’s mother, writer Kay Haring, were born.

Now her mother and her sister, Lana Hill, along with husband Tanner Spaulding, live just outside of Baltimore. Spaulding is a friend of Good Weather Gallery’s owner/curator Brooke Peipert of Alton.

Yenna Hill lives in Reading, about two and a half hours from New York City.

“I remember being in New York and remember when he’d come visit at our grandmother’s house — ‘Uncle Keith is coming today,’ she’d say,” said Hill of their paternal grandparent, Joan Haring. “He was a conduit between the two places — Pennsylvania and New York.

“Talking about Keith is really interesting,” she said. “Because I’ve been talking about him my whole life, I kind of know him better in death than in life.”

Hill has her own story, too. She went through many stages of artistry before feeling as confident as she does today with bold, black lines — a trademark of Haring’s work. His followers and collectors became some of his closest famous friends such as Madonna. To this day, his unmistakable artwork and expressions of love for Haring are often included in the superstar’s concert productions and backdrops.

“I was always interested in line work, but I didn’t want to copy him,” Hill said.

Haring was among the first high-profile New York personalities to contract HIV, develop AIDS and dedicate time as an activist to raise awareness of the virus that spread rapidly in New York in the 1980s, especially among gay men. Haring, an openly gay artist, is a hero to the LGBTQ-plus community and its supporters. He inspired his friends, followers and collectors through his artistic expression, raising awareness about issues such as apartheid, drug abuse and gay rights.

“There are qualities in my body of work and history related to him and other people,” Hill said. “My grandfather was a big part of that. He reviewed my artwork and taught me to do things.”

Her grandfather, Allen Haring, influenced both her uncle and Hill.

“He’s the one who taught Keith to draw,” she said. “We’ve all done it; the whole family would be drawing. It’s just something we did.”

Hill said she knew she would work in lines; that wouldn’t change.

“Keith loved that heavy black line,” she said. “But in my early 20s, hanging with artists and creative people, I concluded I had to find my own line.”

She developed her own style after a 2013 trip to Paris for huge Keith Haring tributes and Sotheby’s Auction with the Keith Haring Foundation. She also got a Haring tattoo in Belgium.

“That turned into my art epiphany,” said Hill, who bartended on and off to be on the European trip.

“I was already trying to be a professional artist, but after that show and tat, I felt like something changed, took off, and I completely understood him more from the Paris shows,”

see YENNA HILL, Page 18

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