On Aug. 16, John Hillman celebrated the 20th anniversary of a special event in his life. On that date in 1977, Hillman entered the Tinley Park Mental Health Center. It was to be the last time he was hospitalized for mental illness. It was also the day Elvis Presley died.
“I didn’t know at the time that it was the day Elvis died, but I use the date as an anniversary,” said the 47-year-old Palos Heights resident.
That day, he walked from Palos Heights to Chicago by way of Markham. He found his way to a Chicago police station and later in the day was admitted to the mental hospital.
Such obsessive walking eventually metamorphosed into a useful pastime; now when he walks, he looks for objects he can use to create designs that are known as “found art.” His journeys also took him back into healthy contact with the community, through a variety of volunteer activities.
“My desire to share my art brought me forth into the world,” he said. “I found out I could go out and be OK.”
Hillman uses bits of fabric, buttons, bottle caps and other discarded items to fashion his artwork, some of which is formed into masks. He also does watercolors and works in India ink.
In addition, Hillman writes poetry, noting that his art came first: “I could use crayons before I learned to write.”
Some of Hillman’s found art is displayed at the Aron Packer Gallery in on Chicago’s North Side, where it is priced from $25 to $200. Packer, who has known Hillman for about three years, has taken him twice to a New York art fair for artists.
“About one-third of my gallery is devoted to (amateur art), and I show other contemporary art, painting, sculpture and photography, but a lot of people know me for this outsider and self-taught art,” Packer explained.
Packer has never sold any of Hillman’s work but hasn’t given up on showing his masks.
“I have plenty of people that I’ve never sold any of their work, and I’ve been a dealer for five years,” he said. “That’s the nature of the business. You get someone really talented and their work is priced well; the art world is a hard nut to crack.”
Hillman has always lived with his parents. His 77-year-old father, Art, a railroad engineer, retired from the Belt Railway Co. of Chicago in 1979. His mother, Betty, 75, stayed at home to care for the family.
The third of five children, Hillman attended grade school in Dolton and Thornton Township High School in Harvey. When his family moved to Palos Heights, he transferred to Sandburg High School in Palos Township, from which he graduated in August 1972. (His mental illness kept him from attending classes regularly.)
First hospitalized for severe depression in 1968 at River Edge Hospital in Forest Park, he was admitted four times that year. After being discharged from the hospital, he took medication only sporadically and didn’t do well, which accounted for the frequent interruptions of his high school career.
“For the next few years, I worked on my writing and art work, doing things that didn’t look like work but were very important to me,” he recalled.
His father gave him an ultimatum: Go to work or attend Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills. “I probably hold the record there for most courses started and dropped,” he said wryly, and he never received a degree.
At times he slept very little and walked constantly, without direction. He was always able to find a police station and get back home safely, although he thinks he probably put himself in dangerous situations at times.
Recalling how he often got lost, he explained, “The geography in your mind is laid over the geography of where you are. You could be in your own back yard and be hopelessly lost.”
Asked why he has been able to stay out of the hospital since 1977, Hillman said, “I don’t think it was what they did for me. The incident was so severe, it washed that part of me out. I have a few mild glitches once or twice a year, but they blow over in a day. The rest of the time I’m OK.”
He is treated as an outpatient through Metropolitan Family Services Southwest in Worth, where his caseworker is Jeanette Navickas.
“(Hillman) is very active in the art community and poetry,” said Navickas, who has known him since she came to the agency two years ago. “He’s brought art projects to the office to show us.”
Navickas meets with Hillman once a month and keeps in touch with him by phone.
“I suspect he’ll continue to do as well as he has been,” she said. “He’s quite friendly and very outgoing. . . . If everyone had such a good outlook on life as he has, the whole world would be a wonderful place, ’cause he’s such a positive person.”
Although he is not well enough to hold a job, Hillman is active as a volunteer. He has served a term as president and another as acting secretary of Friends of the Palos Heights Library, a group that helps promote the library and raise funds.
Elaine Savage, administrator of the Palos Heights Public Library, said, “John has been a regular participant in our book discussion group. He writes a monthly column about the library for Regional News, a weekly Palos Heights newspaper. He was in charge of the Motts program, in which participants collected labels from Motts products and earned some children’s books from the company.”
Hillman planted native prairie plants and helped make scarecrows at the Lake Katherine Nature Preserve in Palos Heights, from which he received a Good Spirit Award in 1995, said Bill Banks, chief naturalist at the preserve.
“He’s been a very reliable and consistent volunteer,” he added. “He’s one of those people who always put forth a lot of effort and get things done.”
At the Community Center Foundation in Palos Park, Hillman also volunteers, painting faces at festivals and participating in writers workshops.
Program director Lois Lauer was impressed by Hillman’s joy journal, in which he writes down the greatest happiness of his day.
“He says it’s a positive experience to have joys compete with each other and choose one,” Lauer explained. “He often says that this place has been very important in his life and he wants to give something back to the center.”
“Volunteering is a big part of sustaining my recovery,” Hillman said. “I have responsibilities. I have to be there and do things.”
His advice to others with emotional problems: “Only so much can be done for you with therapy and medication. When you are stabilized, you have to seek on your own the things that will strengthen you.”
Of his recent anniversary, Hillman said, “I’m amazed I’ve made it this far. I’m just going to celebrate the whole year.”
