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I am pleased that my art can be used to support these two great Bay Area organizations - SF Camerawork and the Bolinas Museum.I donated Evocation #020 (picured here) to the SF Camerawork Benefit Auction. An exhibit of all donated artwork opens November 3rd - tonight! It will be up until the auction on December 3rd. You need not be present to bid - they have a great online system set up - click here to check it out. This print is one of my favorites from the Evocation series which explores the tension between internal and external space and the distortions that can happen between the two.
Then I am working away in the studio on some new pieces for the Bolinas Museum Miniatures Exhibition - an annual benefit art sale of works that are 6 x 6 x 6 inches or smaller. I love the scale of this show. It's a wonderful assignment to make something for this exhibit that includes many talented West Marin artists. The show will open with a reception on Saturday afternoon, November 19. If you are in the SF Bay Area, I hope you will get a chance to check out both events.
I am so excited this spring to be having another Muir Beach Open Studio and Garden event with my neighbors Wendy Johnson & Peter Rudnick over the weekend of April 9 & 10.
I really love opening my studio this way and having a chance to talk with people, sharing my creative space & working process. These events also provide such a wonderful way for me to combine my professional and family life. My studio is just across the yard from my home in Muir Beach. My mother Sandra Hobson will be here signing copies of her book, Rituals for Life's Milestones. My daughters Anna and Jessica will be here, and we invite other children to come play outside in our large yard under the budding apple trees.
I also love collaborating with Wendy and Peter who are such artists of the garden. Together they used to run the gardens and farm at Green Gulch Zen Center, and now they have a home nursery selling organically grown vegetable, herb and flower seedlings as well as perennial and native plants. You can find a complete plant list on their web site at www.gardeningatthedragonsgate.com. A portion of all sales will go to benefit public school garden programs in the Bay Area.
If you are in the area, I hope you will celebrate springtime with us and come by for tea and treats, garden inspiration, new plants, fine art, and fun. See details below.
Muir Beach Open Studio & Garden Sale
Saturday and Sunday, April 9-10
Mary Daniel Hobson: Artist Open Studio
open 11am-4pm at 1815 Shoreline Hwy, Muir Beach
Wendy Johnson & Peter Rudnick: Open Garden & Spring Plant Sale
open 10am-4pm at 1795 Shoreline Hwy, Muir Beach
For directions, click here.
Please park along Muir Woods Road.
Questions? Email me or call 415-383-5617.
IMAGE INFO: Above: Evocation #14 ©marydanielhobson.
Below: A photo of Wendy and Peter's nursery
I am delighted to share that I have new solo show at Cavallo Point in Sausalito, CA - both in their art gallery (pictured here) and in their healing center. This lodge at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge has a unique art program. In addition to the gallery, each guest room features original fine art work on extended loans by wonderful local artists including Linda Connor, Judith & Richard Lang, Candace Gaudiani and many more.
I was thrilled when curator Anne Veh contacted me last fall about showing my work there. I have to say I hesitated though when she told me the dates because the show was to open January 5 - just two days before the due date of my second child. Fortunately Anne was open to creative solutions, so in mid-December when I was very round with pregnancy, we met in my studio and selected all the work, wrapped it up, and she took it with her and stored it at her home until she installed the show a few weeks later. I had to really let go in a way that I don't usually with an exhibit and let Anne truly "curate" - a word whose etymology means "to take care of." She has attended to all the myriad details of the show beautifully.
One of my favorite parts of this exhibit is the spirit of generosity that is present. 10% of all sales proceeds go to the non-profit of my choice. I selected Lily Yeh's outstanding organization Barefoot Artists which "works with poor communities around the globe using art to bring healing, self-empowerment and social change." And then at Anne's suggestion, we created a give-away for every visitor. In the center of the gallery is a wooden bowl filled with rolled scrolls tied with ribbon, and inside each is one of my favorite quotes about the creative process. There are 11 different quotes, so each visitor can intuitively pick the best one for him or her. As you can see from the photo above, the bowl was empty the day I visited as these have been so popular that it has been hard to keep up with the demand, but I have been assured that the bowl is replenished often. If you are unable to attend the show, but would still like the creative inspiration, please email me and I will send you a pdf of the quotes.
One of the quotes is George Braque: "Art is a wound turned into light." Anne as a curator really understood right away the healing inherent in my creative process, and chose to emphasize this aspect in the show. She selected a very nice group of over 40 pieces from 5 different series including Mapping the Body, Milagros, Evocations, and Sanctuary (pictured in the photo above). I do hope if you are in the Bay Area that you will get a chance to see the show and/or hear my artist talk on March 22.
Mary Daniel Hobson, Creativity: A Journey of Transformation
Cavallo Point Art Gallery & Healing Center, Sausalito, CA
January 5-April 3, 2011
Special Program & Artist Talk on Tuesday evening, March 22, 2011
For directions & more information, please see www.cavallopoint.com or call 415-339-4740.
I just received a nice package of 10 copies of the new issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, which includes reproductions of my series Evocations. They have paired my images of bottles, maps, and bodies with an article on the 5th precept of Buddhism - the non-use of intoxicants. I am still not exactly sure how my work connects to the writing, but I like the poetic stretch of having it appear in a new context. Also in this issue is a great article on the Gulf Oil Spill by my neighbor & gardener Wendy Johnson, plus an inspiring piece on "Yoga and Creativity" by Anne Cushman. I love what she says here about writing, which is also applicable to photography:
"I used to believe that writing was a way to create a kind of back up life for myself, to pickle reality in paragraphs for future consumption. I thought I could capture life's precious, fluttering moments in a net of words. But through yoga - and growing older - I know that writing can't trump impermanence. What I've mounted on the head of my writer's pin are just cocoons. The actual butterflies have flow away long ago."
Until today, I had never read Tricycle before. They contacted me out of the blue to ask permission to use my work in this issue. What I love is that my art is exposing me to new ideas - it's as if the pieces themselves have a life of their own, traveling out into the world and connecting in new ways with words, ideas, and people - giving me back the gift of new experience.
A good friend and collector sent me this photo from her iPhone last week. I was touched to see how she has arranged on her mantle postcards of my art with the three collages she owns. Pictured here left to right are two small-scale collages from the Milagros series, a postcard of Creative Fire Within, the collage In Memory from Mapping the Body, and postcards of Flight, Evocation #001, and Sanctuary #1.
This photo was such a great reminder that my work exists and lives beyond me. It is easy to forget when I am working away alone in the studio that my art is out there enriching the experiences of others. I am so grateful to Nell for the gift of seeing how my work is installed in such a graceful and beautiful way in her home.
Just a quick post to share a few photographs from my exhibition at Modern Book Gallery in Palo Alto, CA. This two-woman show includes new works from my three series - Evocations, Sanctuary, and Bottle Dreams - as well as some very interesting 3-D pieces by Claudia Kunin from her series, Myth. A frame-junkee myself, I was entranced by Claudia's intricate frames and enjoyed the interactive feature of putting the 3-D glasses to my eyes that made each mythogical scene seem to pop off the wall. Mark, Bryan, and Niniane at Modern Book did the installation, and it's always fun to see my work in a new context. I particularly enjoy the way they clustered different pedestals together to showcase the Bottle Dreams work - see the first picture here. This show is up until June 3, and Modern Book keeps nice long hours - open daily from 11am into the evening at 494 University Street in Palo Alto, CA. If you are in the area, I hope you will get to see the show.
Photos below show my work, the second to last image shows some of Claudia Kunin's work, and the last photo shows the artists with the Modern Book crew - from left to right: me, Mark, Niniane, Danny, Bryan, and Claudia.
Lately, my creative energy has been channeled into a whole new kind of endeavor. I am almost eight months pregnant with my first child, due on May 14. It is quite a miracle to feel this little being kicking around inside me. One unexpected side effect of this pregnancy has been that the more my belly swells, the less verbal I feel. Rather than initiate anything new, I have been filled with the burning desire for closure and completion of anything in progress. I imagine on the other side of birth, in the midst of parenting, new ideas for art will come to me. For now, I sort and organize, getting my nest ready to welcome this new life.
The image here, Evocation #017, was created just a month before I became pregnant and I look back on it now and see it as a fertility piece. The belly nests on soft feathers, the flower is drying up and going to seed, and the bottle is a vessel containing and protecting this process while embraced by the natural world around it. It truly amazes me how the intuitive process of art can be so previsionary.
My husband and I are heading south today to Carmel, CA. My exhibition of Mapping the Body and Milagros at the Center for Photographic Art opens there tomorrow evening, Friday, March 14 with a gallery talk at 5pm followed by a reception from 6-8pm.
On the way down, we will stop in Palo Alto at Modern Book Gallery to drop off over 30 pieces for my exhibit opening there on April 4. This show includes Evocations, some Bottle Dreams, and also work from Sanctuary including new prints like this one here of Sanctuary #5 which I just picked up from the framer yesterday.
It is rich, full time for exhibiting for me right now. It is exciting to think that work from five of my major series will be up and on display all at once. If you are in the area, I hope you will get a chance to see these exhibits. If not, you can always see the work online at www.marydanielhobson.com.
“In fact, the ability to start out upon your own impulses is fundamental to the gift of keeping going upon your own terms, not to mention the further and more fulfilling gift of getting started all over again – never resting upon the oars of success or in the doldrums of disappointment…Getting started again – in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm” – Seamus Heaney
The new year offers the gift of freshness. Now that December’s social festivities are complete, I turn inward and cultivate my inner world. Today this has looked like cleaning, sorting, organizing, integrating…laying a solid foundation for the year to come. Soon the studio will feel like a clean slate, ready for 2008 to fill it with new ideas and impulses.
Image above is #008 from the Evocations series.
Here is one of my new images from the Evocations series. You can now see all the new prints online by clicking here and here (once there click on the thumbnails to enlarge them).
Also, the Emerson Blog did a nice interview with me this week about my art. You can check it out by clicking here. Enjoy.
After a couple visits with Kris at Electric Works (formerly Trillium), my new prints for Evocations are in production. Soon I will have nine new images to add to the series. Here you can see the proofs emerging upside down, rolling off the printer. Very exciting for me!I did a lot of shooting for this series over the summer. It is always a challenge to edit the images down. To do so, I make small proof prints in my studio and shuffle them around for a while. Then I begin to selectively share them with people whose opinions I trust. I usually start with my husband, and sometimes my parents – asking them, “Which are your favorites and why?” I also have three trusted photography friends who I consulted this time – artists Candace and Jules, and curator Nora. Candace helped me see more clearly how space works in the series. Jules helped me focus on how the details interact with each other. Nora helped me see the series as a whole and edit out work that was too similar or too different. After integrating all the feedback, I made my final selection – adding nine new images to grow this series to twenty.I have begun to think of Evocations as my summer series. I shot the first batch of prints in the summer of 2006 (and then printed them in 2007). This past year, found me shooting in July and August again because that is when the foglight I love is so prevalent. Maybe every summer for the next few years, I will pull out my maps and objects and play again in the fog, creating new images to keep the series growing slow and steady over time.
I spent yesterday signing my editioned prints from Evocations. They were printed in sets of 10 in February, but slid to the back burner, and only now, in the open space of summer, have I found time to tend to each print - signing it, naming it, giving it a number, and then sleeving it in crystal clear envelopes. It is satisfying work, clearing the way for the new to emerge in this series.
"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star." -Friedrich Nietzsche
The studio is a mess these days. I have excavated my drawers, piles, and files, discovering maps, photographs, and other symbolic objects buried in my studio. Now they flood my main worktable, inspiring me to try new directions with my Evocations series. It is a healthy chaos they have created. The kind, that I hope and pray, will lead to the creation of a “dancing star” or at least some strong new images.
I am almost reluctant to speak this aloud in case it might jinx me – but, after overcoming some resistance, I have been shooting new photos for my Evocations series. Every foggy morning for the last week, I have been on my studio deck – my table filled with a variety of props and backgrounds – working intuitively, quickly, before the sun bursts through. I prefer the even, filtered lighting of fog to the shadows caused by bright sun. Fortunately for me, Muir Beach is one of the foggiest places in the Bay Area and summer is fog season. It feels a lot like fishing – putting in my time, taking photographs, and later I will edit and see what I caught. But for now, I am having much fun playing in the fog with bottles, maps, and other ephemera.
Last night I participated in Sausalito Art Walk – a monthly event celebrating the arts with live music in the streets, and galleries and businesses staying open late. Prints from Evocations and Sanctuary were on display at Sausalito Picture Framing at 310 Caledonia Street, and they will be up all month until July 9. Bob Woodrum just opened Sausalito Picture Framing a few months ago, and he did a great job on all my framing for the Bolinas Museum show. It is a pleasure to have my work displayed in his very professional shop with crisp white walls and great lighting. I also love that my work is in the company of all of his molding samples since I am such a frame junkee (as witnessed in my series Mapping the Body).
I took this photo above through the front window. It seemed fitting somehow to photograph a piece from Evocations through the distortion of the glass storefront window as it mimics the distortion already happening in the photograph, which was shot through a glass bottle. In the background you can see additional pieces from the series that are more clearly displayed in the photo below.
I just spent five days in Portland at a portfolio review event called Photo Lucida. Every other year, more than 100 photographers and 60 photo-professionals (curators, gallerists, publishers, etc.) gather at the Benson Hotel to network and dialogue. Over the course of four days, each photographer has eighteen 20-minute, one-on-one reviews with various photo-professionals. This year, the reviews were held in the chandelier-lit room pictured here – the reviewer on one side of a white linen-covered table and the photographer on the other.
I gain so much from attending these events…First, I get organized. I prepare my resume, handouts, and my prints and mixed media work for presentation.Second, I get new words. This time I was sharing my current work in progress – Evocations and Sanctuary –
and it was so helpful to get the keen insights of people who are skilled at looking and talking about photographs. Some of my new favorite words I collected are "herbarium" and "forensic."Third, I get good questions – ones to take home and mull over. For example, what is the role of beauty in my art?Fourth, I get diverse feedback – some people love certain images while others love different ones, maybe even somebody else’s least favorite image. In the end, I leave with the affirmation that I simply need to make the work I feel most called to make.Fifth, I get opportunities and possibilities. Many of the people I met will consider my work for future shows and publications. For example, Jim Casper offered to publish Evocations in an upcoming issue of Lens Culture.Sixth, I get so inspired by the talent and commitment of my fellow photographers there. Some of the work that knocked my sox off is Heidi Kirkpatrick’s mixed media pieces and Jessica Hines’ in-camera collages.Seventh - and this is the main reason I go - I get connected. Spending four days with almost 200 people who value the creation of new photography-based work makes me feel - even after the event is over - that I am part a larger community of accomplished image makers from around the country. Now, back here in the studio all by myself, I feel profoundly that I am not alone.
A huge sense of relief flooded me after leaving Trillium the other day. Located in Brisbane, CA, Trillium (aka The Land of Yes) specializes in fine art printing - everything from lithography to digital media. I have been experimenting with the latter with the excellent help of imaging specialist Kris Shapiro. She is a whiz with Photoshop, and although my knowledge of PS is expanding, it was nice to be able to have Kris make edits quickly for me that would have taken much trial and error for me to figure out. Sometimes it’s just really nice to have someone hold your hand, especially with a deadline fast approaching.
My Bolinas Museum show will be installed in two weeks, and I am happy to say with a huge sigh that the work is almost complete. I have a dozen new pieces from Bottle Dreams, and digital prints from two new series, Evocations and Sanctuary. Pictured here are some of my prints, all curly from coming straight off the press. I owe much gratitude to the Epson printer in the back left, named Scratch, and, of course, to Kris.
I have lost my voice and am looking for words. My head cold has morphed into a chest cold that leaves me speechless today. Ironically, my new series is word-less too. And so this afternoon, I have spread out each new print on my studio table and, with my thesaurus in hand, have been brainstorming. Whatever words tumble in I write down on pink post-it notes attached to each print. Words like..
Harbor
Sanctum
Anchor
Landing
Compass
Encompass
Chart
Ashore
Exploration
Angling
Notation
Gestation
The list goes on and on, and I am not sure where it is leading me. The prints are resisting words, probably because they were shot as a visual and emotional exploration – not an intellectual one. In my last two series, Milagros and Bottle Dreams, a story or concept was the key driving force behind them. So this time I wanted to make work that was simply about looking and responding to the objects and artifacts in my studio, creating what I hope are evocations of states of mind.
The next day or so must hold the answer, as it is time to take this work out into the world. One of these images will be the announcement image for my upcoming show at the Bolinas Museum. The postcard must be ordered tomorrow.
Maybe in the end, I will honor the silence of my own speech today by allowing each piece to remain a mute mystery, simply called Untitled. Time will tell. For now, my list continues to grow.
A head cold has slowed me down. I canceled all my appointments today and stayed in the studio, next to the gas heater, drinking hot peppermint tea while I color corrected and spotted digital files.Being sick with pending deadlines can lead to a sense of despair, but today I was determined not to give in. There simply isn’t time. Because of upcoming exhibitions, I have to keep the new work growing. And that is not a bad thing – it kept me in my chair today, working with new images like the one here.
I am pleased that my art can be used to support these two great Bay Area organizations - SF Camerawork and the Bolinas Museum.
