Volksboutique presents a forum for production, exhibition and exchange.
The establishment of a familiar arena to illustrate where artistic experience should be lived.

Volksboutique catalogues a lifestyle.

The term Volksboutique was inspired by the East German concept Volks-Eigenen Betrieb - the socialist terminology for collective ownership and a production label indicating products made by and for the people.

Volksboutique is an exercise in labor, in public service and conversational skill and in making the most of what one's got.

Volksboutique reveals the dichotomy between a working atmosphere and its result - between introversion and extroversion. We show the mess behind the scenes. We exhibit mistakes and attempt to capitalize upon chaos.

Volksboutique is an entity incorporating everyday life and artistic practice.

Volksboutique presents projects to further its own definition and production ethic. We take forms that are recognizable in every day life, and bend them slightly to make them individual.

Volksboutique redefines what 'art' means and what skills become artistic.

Volksboutique is not theater. It is a production of life.

Volksboutique is shared responsibility between artist and viewer.

Volksboutique is setting up one's own parameters and operating within them. Living by one's own design. Creating definitions. Freedom of occupation.

Volksboutique is Self Starter. Cottage Industry. Do-It-Yourself. Be Your Own Boss.

"Hill's Volksboutique can be called a second hand store. Or it can be called a participatory artwork that takes the form of a functioning salesroom and workshop space. Simultaneously a shop, an evolving installation, a space for performance, a slice of life, and an amorphous messy inclusive work open to all questions, it absorbs found objects as compositional elements and viewers as participants. Above all, Volksboutique is a place of informal human exchange that raises the conceptual stakes."

- Kim Levin, in The Volksboutique Guide
1997

"We see things not as they are, but as we are."

- H.L. Tomlinson
excerpted from Braude's Handbook of Stories for Toastmasters and Speakers 1957