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I am getting very excited about my Open Studio on Saturday and am extra delighted to share the news that my mother, Sandra Hobson, will be there all afternoon signing copies of her book, Rituals for Life’s Milestones. My mother has always known how to turn special events into meaningful rituals. As a child, birthdays in our household were celebrated every year with breakfast in bed, and Valentines Day often began with a trail of paper hearts leading to the dining table. Over the years, my mother has honed this gift for ritual by studying different indigenous cultures around the world and bringing that wisdom back home where she can share it with friends and clients, helping them navigate life’s passages with more grace and meaning. She has captured 15 of these rituals in her book, Rituals for Life’s Milestones, which has been beautifully designed by my father, Charles Hobson, in a limited edition of 500 copies. Each copy has an actual stone glued to the cover, referencing the use of elements from nature in so many of the rituals described within the book. If you would like to learn more about her book and the healing power of ritual, you could listen to a podcast interview I did with my mom for the Arts & Healing Network by clicking here, or download it into iTunes by clicking here. If you are in the Bay Area, I hope you will to stop by and enjoy all the great offerings of the day on Saturday, April 17 from 10am-4pm: Wendy Johnson's Garden Sale, my Open Studio, and my mother's book signing. Please contact me if you have any questions.
I took a family excursion to SFMOMA on Friday evening with my father, daughter, and husband to attend a Foto Forum walk-through of the new Lee Miller show. It was such a treat to see so many vintage prints by her. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Lee Miller and relied heavily on books for my view of her photographic oeuvre. Now at SFMOMA I could view the wonderful subtleties in her prints. I drank them in, filling my creative well.
The walk-through was led by curator Marc Haworth Booth and Lee Miller’s son, Antony Penrose. They each animated the images on the wall with background stories and information. For example, the photograph below is a wonderful surrealist image of the magic electricity found in the everyday occurrence of opening a door. Marc Haworth Booth explained that this was a door to an exclusive shop and that the explosive illusion came from light hitting the marks left by the diamond rings of wealthy women scratching against the glass as they turned the handle. I have always viewed this image as articulating the power of the hand to ignite the creative spark that generates new art.
It is hard to consider Lee Miller’s work without connecting it to stories from her multi-faceted life. Born in Poughkeepsie in 1907, she modeled for Vogue magazine, was Man Ray’s mate/muse/assistant, ran a portrait studio in New York City, married an Egyptian and lived in Egypt for several years, then became one of the first female war correspondents during WWII, and after the war married Roland Penrose and settled down in the countryside raising her son and entertaining artistic friends like Picasso and Max Ernst. The rich variety of her life caused her son, when writing Lee’s first biography, to call it the Lives of Lee Miller. I have recently been enjoying Lee Miller: A Life and the catalogue for the exhibition.
It was a treat to see this show with my father, Charles Hobson. When he created his book, Parisian Encounters, about eight famous couples who met in Paris, he included Lee Miller and Man Ray, recounting the story of their first meeting. Lee Miller was traveling in Europe and decided to stay in Paris and study with “the best photographer in the city,” which at the time was Man Ray. So she went to his studio and rang the buzzer, but the concierge informed her he had already left for his summer holiday. Crestfallen, she went around the corner to a café, and finding him seated there, she marched right up to him and introduced herself, saying “Hi, I am Lee Miller, your new assistant.” He countered, “I don’t take assistants, and anyway I am leaving now for my vacation.” She said, “Fine, I am coming with you.” And she did and so began a rich collaboration.
It was stories like these that inspired me, as a student at Vassar, writing my thesis on Lee Miller in Poughkeepsie (the city where she was born), to really go after what I wanted in life. If, at a time when women most often defined themselves as mothers and wives, Lee could burst through limitations and live such a full, animated life, then so perhaps, could I. She helped me dream bigger and commit myself to the path of photography. When I began my series Mapping the Body, it was her and Man Ray’s vision of the cropped female figure that informed the way I photographed my own body – mining inspiration from their vision to create my own. In the end, I think there are people who touch you through time, despite death and never having met. Lee Miller is one of those intangible mentors for me. It’s why seeing her show on Friday filled me with that magic electricity of exploding hands.
“The notion of a curious, wistful man walking the city and turning up treasure in debris, seeing the transcendent in the forgotten, the discarded, the mundane – such a notion is intrinsically hopeful.” – Leah Hager Cohen
This morning while flipping throught the Sunday NY Times, the Book Review section fell open to page eleven revealing an illustration of Joseph Cornell’s “Parrot for Juan Gris” (pictured here) and a review by Leah Hager Cohen of the new Cornell catalogue, Navigating the Imagination by Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. I was blessed to have received this book as a Christmas gift from my parents – my father having been mesmerized by the exhibit as much as I was. For those of you who read my earlier blog post on Cornell, I did indeed make it back again to see this show two more times before it closed last week, and I was richly rewarded for it.
One thing I was struck by was Cornell’s use of containers within containers, such as a box that contains little drawers that one must open to discover the treasures inside. Unfortunately the museum does not let you actually touch the pieces, but I could imagine the delighted curiosity that would accompany opening each of the drawers in a piece like Untitled (Aviary with Drawers) from 1949. I myself as an artist have been consistently fascinated by the concept of containment – often using containers as the starting point for a new piece – whether that starting point be a new bottle or an elegant frame. The idea of doubling the concept of containment by adding containers within containers sparks new creative ideas for me.
Another thing that impressed me was how richly Cornell fed his creative spirit. An incredibly well read artist (the catalogue contains a selected bibliography of 150 titles in his library), he often drew direct inspiration from figures like Emily Dickenson. He also created “folders, slipcases and small valises with loose arrangements of ‘imaginative pictorial research.’” For example, in his portfolio, “Portrait of Ondine,” Cornell spent 20 years gathering ephemera such as illustrations, photos, newspaper articles and more all in homage to the nineteenth century ballerina Fanny Cerrito in her role as Ondine. As Hartigan says, “the combination reveals how far Cornell ranged in creating a new poetic context for his subject.” I love the idea of researching an area of fascination over a long period and allowing the research to be poetic, rather than linear and multimedia, rather than purely verbal.
As the book reviewer describes with this catalogue on Joseph Cornell, Lynda Roscoe Hartigan “doesn’t navigate his imagination so much as map the explicit tributaries that fed it.” And in doing so she has created a new tributary that is feeding the river of my own imagination.
Earlier this week I attended a party in honor of my father’s archive being acquired by Stanford University. It is a true cause for celebration – the knowledge that one’s work has a long-term home where it will be catalogued and cared for into posterity. For over twenty years, Charles Hobson has dedicated himself to making extraordinary handmade artist’s books like the one pictured here called Dancing with Amelia about the relationship between Amelia Earhart and her husband George Palmer Putnam. I am so glad to see my father get this recognition, and although it is usually the parent who says this about the child, I, the child, am proud of him. He carries such talent, such passion and drive, and has been such a generous source of support and creative inspiration.
What also captivated my mind that night was the notion of the long view as an artist. Usually, I see about one year out in terms of planning for shows and new work. But in telescoping out to the largesse of my life, I begin to question what are the long term goals and dreams for my art? Will I ever be lucky enough to have an institution collect my archive? Only time will tell. But for now I can dream…On the note of archiving, the current issue of Art on Paper has some nice articles on photography, including one on the Getty’s growing archive of photographic materials. As digital technology takes over, the need for examples of older photographic media grows - especially for dating and authenticating earlier photographic work. The historian in me is so appreciative of the human need to collect and remember the past, and I am grateful for the institutions that do so.
I am getting very excited about my Open Studio on Saturday and am extra delighted to share the news that my mother, Sandra Hobson, will be there all afternoon signing copies of her book, Rituals for Life’s Milestones.
