(mysterious music) - I'm Billy Fillmore.

I make intentionally creepy stuff.

(mysterious music continues) I really like to take the things that I don't like about society or the things that I've experienced, and I try to replicate that in 3D materials.

In the end, it's all about trying to make work that makes people stop and wonder, "Why the hell would anyone make that?"

(mysterious music continues) When I was a kid, I was terrified of my closet in my bedroom, and I didn't know why.

In fact, my parents have these really funny pictures of me sleeping in the hallway.

Or I would go to Mike's room, my brother's room, and I'd sleep with him.

And then eventually my brother was so tired of me coming and waking him up and sleeping with him that they put a lock on his door and then they have a picture of me sleeping in front of his door.

'cause I was so terrified of sleeping in my room.

I remember looking into the closet and seeing the void, and I was so afraid of the possibilities of what could be inside of there.

(spooky music) (shriek reverberating) And so I was so afraid of that closet.

And I think my aesthetic and my taste kind of built around that terror that now I feel like I am no longer afraid of the closet.

But now I've become the thing in the closet.

(gentle music) Just Put Him Back, (laughs) it relates to my birth story.

I was an in vitro baby, and this was in 1980, and an in vitro baby cost $10,000.

(chuckles) And so my dad never let me forget how much I cost.

And during the time of my birth, it was just a very traumatic event.

I guess there was at some points, they asked my mom, you have to choose between yourself and the baby.

(gentle music) So I was finally birthed.

And (chuckles) the way it's told to me is the umbilical cord wrapped around my belly.

And so I was covered in green and none of my hair follicles had been like sloughed off, which is normal.

All of your hair follicles grow when you're born, but some babies are born with all their hair follicles still attached.

So from head to toe, I was covered in orange hair and green --- I was so gross that my mom's first words to me was like, "That's the ugliest thing I've ever seen.

Just put him back."

So I think that that is one of those perfect kind of stories where my artwork comes from, where it's beautiful on one hand and how much trauma and suffering had to occur.

But then it's really funny on the other hand that you went through all this trouble, and you just get a red-haired, green ---- covered baby.

I get along.

I love my parents.

Mom, Dad, I love you.

And we get along great, but they were kind of the first institutional rule setters for me.

And I never understood why.

I got a bachelor's degree in business administration, and there's nothing worse than graduating with a degree that you didn't actually want.

And the day after I graduated, I went to my first visiting artist lecture.

And the artist's name was Justin Sweet, who is a concept artist.

And I'd never seen anybody make the stuff that I was consuming.

So he made a lot of concept art for like the Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, some video games that I had played, comic books.

And it just kind of blew my mind.

And after that, the next semester, I just started going back to art school.

There's two parts of me that I always am questioning.

One is my 13 year old self who was in the middle of puberty and being punished for being different or not understanding the rules.

And the other part of me that I'd like to listen to is my deathbed self.

I'm imagining myself in my nineties or hopefully like later than that in a hospital bed trying to look back on my life and hoping that what I did was worthwhile.

So between those two parts of my personality, I find myself trying to make work that appeals to both of them.

So I've worked here at Russell Sage College on New Scotland, and right now I live like a mile and a half away and I always walk.

And when I'm walking, I'm not looking for stuff, but stuff seems to find me.

So I walked by a church that's down on New Scotland and in the grass was this doll that definitely looks like it survived a fire or something like that.

But its porcelain head is still intact.

And I saw its mangled body and I was just like, "That is the ugliest thing I've ever seen, Like I was to my mom."

I pick it up and its eyes are closed.

When I pick it up, its eyes open, and I was just like... And its eyes are just terrible looking 'cause they survived the fire.

But it's just the weirdest creepiest thing ever.

And so when I brought it back, I didn't want to just sit it on a shelf so I ended up making a box for it.

And in my mind, I was imagining what would my grandma, the grandmother who said I was the cutest thing she'd ever seen, what kind of box would she like to see it in?

And so I went to Joanne's and found it like the prettiest, nicest fabric.

So the tension between a traditional doll that's been mutilated, not by me, just found it and then putting it in a curio cabinet box as if it's some kind of precious object was just really fun.

For me, I like affecting other people, but the main audience for me is me and those two characters I talked about like my 13 year old self and my ancient deathbed persona.

By paying attention to those two, what it's really doing is making sure that I'm not being depressed about what I made, and I'm not anxious about what I could make.

And it's always kind of pushing me to make the best work that I can make now.