30 | APRIL 22 • 2021
H
illary Levin was scared of bugs
when she was a little girl.
“I didn’t like being in nature. I
didn’t play sports — I was not athletic,
” she
says. “I liked being inside.
”
And she liked doing art projects.
Growing up in New Jersey, she liked
watching a TV show that showed people
drawing characters while telling stories
about them.
“I thought that was the coolest thing,
”
Levin says. “I started doing the same thing.
My mom would walk in the room and be
like, ‘Who are you talking to?’ I remember
it being the first time that I drew some-
thing, and I felt like it came alive — I could
see the process, and others could see the
process based on my telling of the story.
”
Levin’s mother enrolled her daughter
in private oil-painting classes at age 8. She
learned that she loved creating but didn’t
have the patience for oils — “they took too
long to dry,
” she says. “I love working with
acrylics, watercolors. Anything that dries
fast. I love textures. I’m very tactile — I
love to touch everything and smell every-
thing, and I want others to feel comfortable
approaching and touching my work, too.
”
Levin eventually took classes in every-
thing from basket weaving and jewelry
making to pottery — she even learned how
to knit (from her future mother-in-law)
and created the chuppah under which she
married her husband, Jordan. And though
she earned a bachelor’s in fine arts with
an emphasis in painting from Western
Michigan University and even eventually
worked as assistant director at the Janice
Charach Gallery at the Jewish Community
Center in West Bloomfield, at some point
Levin fell away from her passion of paint-
ing.
She found other passions that made her
happy, too. Cooking became a creative out-
HOME & GARDEN
Rediscovering
her creative passion,
painter turns home
into work of art.
Tapping
into
Joy
Joy
LYNNE KONSTANTIN
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Hillary Levin painted a mural on the kitchen bar of her Commerce home. Each project is hand-painted in acrylic and coated in polyurethane.
COURTESY OF HILLARY LEVIN
Hillary and
Jordan Levin