Vandorn Hinnant, born in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1953, has built an artistic path shaped by curiosity, discipline, and a long study of the relationship between art, science, and spirit. His early years in Greensboro set the stage for a life spent asking big questions through visual form. He studied Art Design at North Carolina A & T State University, earning his BA, then continued at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he focused on sculpture. This mix of design structure and sculptural thinking continues to inform how he approaches every piece he creates.
Over the years, Hinnant has moved with ease between drawing, painting, sculpture, and installations. His work carries a sense of inquiry—sometimes gentle, sometimes direct—but always grounded in a belief that art can reconnect people with deeper ways of seeing and understanding themselves.
The Artwork: I/EYE Have Been to The Mountaintop (also titled An American Dream (Yet to Be Realized))
Hinnant’s 2025 drawing, I/EYE Have Been to The Mountaintop, is a compact piece at 15 x 22.5 inches, yet it feels much larger than its physical size. Graphite, metallic inks, and Prismacolor pencils move across cotton rag paper with the calm precision of someone who has spent years thinking about how lines, shapes, and symbols carry meaning. Hinnant often works from a geometric base, and in this piece, geometry is not decoration—it is the map that shapes the entire composition.
He has said the geometric structure comes from long studies of ancient knowledge on the “Geometry of Nature & Life,” a discipline that looks at patterns found in nature, mathematics, and spiritual traditions. For him, geometry is not an abstract exercise but a reminder that everything is connected. In this artwork, the geometry sits beneath the surface like a quiet engine, keeping the piece anchored while the other elements unfold around it.
The viewer meets three concentric circles of text, written by Hinnant himself, which form the core of the drawing. These circles can be seen as the symbolic center of a toroidal field—the energetic structure often referred to in science, meditation, and metaphysics as a self-sustaining loop of energy moving outward and folding back into itself. Without becoming literal, the piece suggests that human awareness works in this same way: thought expands outward, affects the world, and returns to shape the self.
The materials matter too. Graphite brings clarity, metallic inks add a subtle reflective quality that shifts under light, and colored pencils provide warmth and softness. Together, they create a surface that feels both hand-drawn and slightly otherworldly. Nothing in the drawing feels rushed; each mark seems placed with intention, as though part of a larger conversation happening beneath the paper.
The title points to a familiar cultural reference, but Hinnant handles it in his own way. The Mountaintop echoes historical speeches and aspirations tied to justice, equality, and hope, yet he adds the alternate title An American Dream (Yet to Be Realized) to make it clear that the work looks forward, not backward. The piece sits in the tension between what is hoped for and what has not yet arrived, urging the viewer to slow down and consider what “the dream” means today.
Hinnant speaks openly about the inspirations behind the work. He describes them as “layers of awareness,” each one tied to the possibility of lifting the human race through imagery and language. There is no grand claim here—just a steady confidence that what we visualize, study, and think about has influence. When he writes, “Our thoughts are acts of creation,” he is not being poetic for the sake of it. He is stating the principle that guides the geometry, the text, and the way each line sits on the page.
The drawing is not loud. It doesn’t demand attention. Instead, it invites the viewer inward, offering a moment to reflect on how thought shapes the future. The real movement in the piece is internal: a kind of mental shift, a sense that the viewer is meeting their own center through the structured quiet of Hinnant’s forms.
I/EYE Have Been to The Mountaintop is both personal and universal. It is built on study, reflection, and years of disciplined practice. It is also open enough for anyone to find a point of entry—an idea, a shape, a phrase that lingers. Hinnant’s hope, it seems, is not to overwhelm but to guide. And in this work, he does exactly that, one geometric line at a time.
