Susan Hillary (Shapiro)

Susan Hillary is a multifaceted artist, farmer, filmmaker and environmental attorney

Art

Susan’s artwork is inspired by her love of nature and life. The colors, light and perspectives of both. Patterns and intersection, environmental advocacy, and endless doodles.  

She enjoys playing with recycled and found materials, i.e. old car doors, windows, window screens and even window shades. 

While a law student and graffiti artist in the 1980’s, Susan exhibited her window paintings in East Village galleries, and transformed some of her “window art” into silk scarves, selling them at Henri Bendel and Fred Segal.   

One Susan Hillary window painting resides in the Gertrude Stein Collection, alongside masterworks of Matisse and Picasso. 

Susan continued creating her art while producing and directing feature films in Los Angeles during the 1990’s. Exhibitions of her paintings and drawings were held at the Devorzan Gallery, The Director’s Guild of America, Santa Monica Place and Jim Budman’s The Pink. She also created large prints for Mirage Editions.

Commissions for environmental advocacy groups foreshadowed the direction her legal work would take in the future. She created visual postcard campaigns to stop clearcutting in Montana and to close the Indian Point Nuclear Reactors on the banks of the Hudson river in New York

Film  

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

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.

As an award-winning producer/director, some of her films have 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 but not limited to; Studio 54 (netflix),  Andy Warhol Diaries (netflix), Love to Love You, Donna Summer (amazonprime), and Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive (amazonprime)

Susan’s Studio 54 footage is part of the 2024-25 “Edges of Ailey”, a multidisciplinary exhibition, at the Whitney Museum of American Art

The award winning short The PRATT in the HAT, written, directed and still photographed by Susan is available on KweliTV.

Environmental Activism  

As a New York State environmental attorney, Susan Hillary Hito Shapiro is a water protector.

She brought ground-breaking litigation that helped close the aging, leaking and dangerous Indian Point nuclear reactors and is currently fighting to stop the dumping of it’s radioactive waste into the Hudson River.

A large interstate Sole Source Aquifer System was protected through her work prevailing on a multitude of cases in the Appellate Division through Article 78  litigation.

 Susan was also an Environmental Protection Agency Fellow, and participant in President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Nuclear Waste. 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.

Farming

In 2009 Susan and her then husband moved to Goshen, purchasing an 1860’s homestead and restarting it as Goshen Green Farm, a regenerative farm utilizing organic, permaculture techniques.  Today the farm specializes in organic seedlings, herbal teas, tinctures, skin care products and natural dye materials, all while striving to share and educate the public about the importance of environmental advocacy

The historic, copper roofed Barn and Greenhouse regularly host a variety of events. Farm to table dinners, weddings, private parties, workshops, art exhibitions and film screenings. 

As a participant in Climate Solutions Week , Upstate Art Week and more, the farm continues Susan’s work in the worlds of both activism and the arts