Susan Hillary (Shapiro)

Susan Hillary is a multifaceted painter, farmer, filmmaker and environmental attorney.

Painting Bio

Susan’s paintings are inspired by her love of nature, life, water, color, light, perspectives, patterns, environmental advocacy, and endless doodles.  She enjoys playing with recycled materials, i.e. discarded windows, car doors, window screens, windows and lamp shades.

In the 1980’s Susan exhibited her window paintings in East Village galleries, while being a graffiti artist and law student.  Some of her window paintings were transformed into silk scarves which sold at Henri Bendel and Fred Segal.  

One of her window paintings resides in the Gertrude Stein Collection, alongside masterworks of Matisse and Picasso.

In the 1990’s while producing and directing feature films in Los Angeles she exhibited her paintings and drawings at the  Devorzan Gallery, Director’s Guild of America, Santa Monica Place, and Jim Budman’s The Pink, and created large prints for Mirage Editions.

Susan’s was commissioned to create visual postcards campaigns for environmental advocacy groups to stop clearcutting in Montana; and to close the Indian Point reactors on the banks of the Hudson River.

FILM

As an award-winning producer/director some of her films premiered at Sundance, Tribeca and Cannes Film Festivals.   She is the archival cinematographer of the only footage filmed inside Studio 54 which has been featured in many documentaries including Studio 54 (netflix);  Andy Warhol Diaries (netflix); Love to Love You, Donna Summer (amazonprime); and Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive (amazonprime).

Her award winning short The PRATT in the HAT, is available on KweliTV.

From 1995-2000 she was Head of Production for Cineville International.  Prior to that she line-produced the Los Angeles section of Night on Earth directed by Jim Jarmusch.

In 1994 she directed an improvised feature comedy at the Cannes Film Festival starring Seymour Cassel and featuring Johnny Depp, John Malkovich, Treat Williams, Peter Gallagher, Denis Hopper, and many others.

ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST

As New York State environmental attorney, Susan is water protector.

She brought ground-breaking litigation while helped close the aging, leaking and dangerous Indian Point nuclear reactors and is currently fighting to stop the dumping of radioactive waste into the Hudson River.  She’s participated in President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Nuclear Waste and was a Environmental Protection Agency fellow.

She’s protected a large interstate Sole Source Aquifer system through Article 78  litigation, by prevailing on a multitude of cases in the Appellate Division   

She is completing a book to share important information about the unconsidered impact nuclear energy has on climate change.  The evidence she has gathered shows that nuclear energy is not a solution to climate change, but rather a major contributor to the rapid heating of the earth and melting of the ice caps.

She is a member of Leadership Council of the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition (IPSEC),  a board member of Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP);  Promoting Health and Sustainable Energy (PHASE); and from 2005 to 2015 a board member of Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, and founder of the not-for-profit LEAF of the Hudson Valley.

FARMER

In 2009 Susan and her then husband moved to Goshen into a 1860’s homestead and restarted it as Goshen Green Farm, a permaculture organic farm.  Today the farm specializes in organic seedlings, herbal teas and skin care products. In the farm’s historic barn and greenhouse we have hosted farm to table dinners, weddings, private parties, workshops, art exhibitions (Upstate Art Weekend) and screenings.