INTO THE STUDIO
Journal of a Mixed Media Photographer
Thankful
I am so grateful for the abundance found in small things….my daughter’s bright smile…this pile of apples gathered from our tree…enough for pie to complete tonight’s dinner with friends. It is Thanksgiving Day and gratitude is in the air and definitely on my mind. And so I thought I would share a few resources on that topic here.
- The Arts and Healing Network’s current issue of AHN News is dedicated to gratitude and includes a review of CD set by Angeles Arrien on Gratitude which has touched me deeply — her use of storytelling is captivating.
- Jennifer Lee’s recent e-newsletter was also full of gratitude resources including this iPhone App for tracking gratitude and this great web site.
- Christine Carter has a great blog post about inspiring Gratitude within families and teaching it to children. I love some of the ideas she has for creating gratitude calendars and using photographs to honor people.
- Shopping at the Paper Source yesterday, I saw that Chronicle Books has published a new Gratitude Journal – a nice way to track daily one’s thankful moments.
Wishing
I just completed my piece for the Bolinas Museum’s 21st Annual Miniatures Exhibition. I love the scale of this show – everything is 6 x 6 x 6″ or smaller. It’s for a good cause – 50% of all sales go to support the museum which is a charming space in West Marin for gathering art and creative people.
The piece here is titled Wishing and is 6 x 6″ framed. Lately I am really interested in how art can be used to capture one’s wishes, hopes, and aspirations and anchor them in a concrete, visual way that makes the wishes more likely to come true. It is a theme that resonates throughout my series Milagros and is likely to continue in future work of mine.
You could see my piece in person at the Bolinas Musuem from November 21-January 3, 2009 at 48 Wharf Road, Bolinas, CA. For more information, visit www.bolinasmuseum.org.
Above My Desk
I spent some time this week re-doing my bulletin boards – making sure that all the images and quotes above my workspace best match what I need for inspiration at this time. In the center is lots of bright white space for new items as I find them. Now I can look up while I am working and see…
- My daughter’s inked footprints at around 3 months old
- A photo of the ocean I took just north of Muir Beach
- A CREATE necklace by Kelly Rae Roberts
- An image of butterflies nailed to a wall by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison
- A photograph of me around age 5 making art in my dad’s studio
- An old rusted door hinge that feels like a portal to me
- The sign language alphabet spelled out in hands
- A Joseph Cornell puzzle and a Frida Kahlo puzzle produced by SFMOMA
- Key words like GENEROSITY printed in red ink by the Paper Source
- Several poems including the following one by Rumi
You’re a song, a wished for song.
Go through the ear to the center
Where sky is, where wine, where silent knowing
Put seeds and cover them.
Blades will sprout where you do your work.
- And this quote by Agnes de Mille
“Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never really knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.”
October Open Studio
Anna helped me deliver my piece, Sanctuary #2 (in the center of this photo), to the annual San Francisco Open Studios exhibition at SOMArts Main Gallery. This show features work by all the artists participating the in the city-wide annual open studios event sponsored by Artspan. Each weekend is dedicated to different neighborhoods where artists open their doors to the public and share their art and process.
I am getting my studio ready for the weekend of October 16-18. This time in addition to a wide assortment of my work from the past ten years, there will also be trade edition books by my father, Charles Hobson, and a chance to view recent publications that include my work, like The Map As Art and Mapping the Journey. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area it would be great to have you stop by.
OPEN STUDIO
Reception: Friday, October 16, 5-7pm
Saturday & Sunday, October 17-18, open 11am-6pm
3069 Washington Street (at Baker), San Francisco, CA
For Marcel Duchamp
Last week I packed up my pieces for the “Seduction of Duchamp” exhibition and sent them north to the Slaughterhouse Space in Healdsburg, CA. I thought I would share the pieces here, so that if you can’t make it to the show, you could still experience the work.
The first piece is a mixed media collage called Invocation and is a new addition to my Milagros series. In it, reproductions of Duchamp’s art surround the photograph of my arm, literally inspiring my hand in the creation of new work. This piece contains a handwritten wish for myself and the other artists in this show – that the spirit of Duchamp generate “new works that delight, humor, and provoke.”
The second piece is called Rose-Sea-La-V. Inspired by Duchamp’s use of glass in works like the Large Glass and Ampoule, I have used old bottles to hold symbolic elements that when pieced together reference Duchamp’s pseudonym, Rrose Sélavy.
The show will open this weekend – I will be at the reception on Saturday, October 3, 5-8pm. For directions, click here. It would be great to see you there.
Invoking Duchamp
“With Duchamp, there’s no choice but to penetrate about two inches behind the eyeballs into the brain.” -Francis Nauman quoted in a recent Wall Street Journal article on Duchamp
This week I have been working on art inspired by Marcel Duchamp for a show this October at the Slaughterhouse Space in Healdsburg, CA. The curator, Hanna Regev, drew her exhibition concept from the location of the Slaughterhouse Space which is surrounded by the vineyards of the Duchamp Winery. Owned by artist Pat Lenz and her husband, the winery includes several of Pat’s outdoor fiberglass sculptures – including this one pictured here of Marcel Duchamp with a trellis of roses growing from his enormous head – alluding to his pseudonym Rrose Selavy.
It is fitting that Pat chose to depict his head so large – over nine feet tall. Marcel Duchamp has always struck me as being very dry, witty, and conceptual. Like the quote above describes, his best art makes you think. And so I have been thinking a lot about how to fuse his sensibility with my own and create something new. Below is a photo of some things in process – I will share more as the work evolves.
