Renewal

“On the new edge of springtime when I stand on the front porch shading my eyes from the weak morning light, sniffing out a tinge of green on the hill and the scent of yawning earthworms, oh, boy, then! I roll like a bear out of hibernation. The maple buds glow pink, the forsynthia breaks into its bright yellow aria. These are the days when we can’t keep ourselves indoors around here, any more than we believe what our eyes keep telling us about the surrounding land, i.e. that it is still a giant mud puddle, now lacking its protective covering of ice. So it comes to pass that one pair of boots after another run outdoors and come back mud-caked – more shoes than we even knew we had in the house, proliferating like wild portabellos in a composty heap by the front door. So what? Noah’s kids would have felt like this when the flood almost dried up: muddy boots be hanged. Come the end of the dark days, I am more than joyful, I am nuts.” -Barbara Kinsolver, from Animal Vegetable, Miracle

Spring officially arrived this week and I feel acutely its call to be outside. Yesterday, it was a challenge to stay indoors and finish my postcard mailing for the Modern Book exhibition, opening April 4 in Palo Alto. Afterwards, I gave myself two hours in the garden, excavating the strawberry and herb bed, discovering more surprise survivors of winter’s frost and dormancy – oregano and rosemary have tripled in size, the artichokes are arriving, and even the celery is ready for eating. So much bounty in the earth - it fills me with great excitement and creative energy.

On the Road

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.

Benign Neglect

For the past several months, I have let my vegetable garden go wild. The result has been a jungle of weeds and plants sending up tall shoots, going to seed. The other day, I traversed wet grass to the far corner of our yard to pay the vegetable garden a visit and was shocked to discover that even in the midst of this growing chaos, there was still bounty to be collected – a bouquet of purple broccoli, a few stray, slow-growing beets, and even a head of lettuce that somehow miraculously avoided the frost. It was heartening to see that things find a way to keep growing despite neglect or absence. If this can happen in the garden, I tell myself, it can also happen in the studio. And that makes my creative heart more at ease. Life these days has pulled me in many directions away from the studio – both the physical space of making art, and even the mental space of dreaming new work. I like to think that when I do return to the studio, some creative seeds planted in the past will have germinated and perhaps even grown into fully formed ideas – surprising and delighting me with their beauty and possibility.

A Fresh Stack of Invitations

Sitting here with morning coffee and a fresh stack of invitations to my upcoming exhibit at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, CA. My husband (good guy that he is) delivered 59 pieces from Mapping the Body and Milagros to them yesterday and picked up 200 invites for me. Labeling and stamping them will keep my hands busy while watching tomorrow night’s Academy Awards.

One of the nice things about this exhibit is that because it is at a non-profit (rather than a commercial) gallery, I am able to include some artist proofs from editions that have sold out and a few pieces borrowed from collectors. So pieces like Release, Crescendo, Territory, Union, and Nocturne will be able to be in the public eye again.

I will be driving down for the show, which opens on Friday, March 14. At 5pm that night, I will give a gallery walk-through, followed by a reception from 6-8pm. If you are in the area, it would be great to see you there.

"The Power of Whimsy"

I almost missed this. Fortunately my mom mentioned it to me, and how it had inspired her and my father. And so I rifled through the large stack of last Sunday’s NY Times to find an article on Sandra Boynton called “The Power of Whimsy” gracing the front page of the business section. Boynton (picture here) has spent the last 30+ years creating greeting cards, children’s books, music cd’s, and more that all share her fresh and quirky vision. As a 12-13 year old, I loved her cards with messages like “Things are getting worse – please send chocolate” or a birthday card with animals proclaiming “Hippo Birdy Two Ewes.” This article offers a nice overview of the life and work of a woman who had made me chuckle as a kid.

Above all, it is really refreshing to see an artist on the cover of the business section and to find her speaking about focusing on the creative process first, and money second. As she says, “To me, the commodity that we consistently overvalue is money and what we undervalue is our precious and irreplaceable time.” Or as the article’s author, Phyllis Korki, explains, “As an entrepreneur, Ms. Boynton maintains a firm grasp on market realities and her finances, but she has refused to make money her main objective. Instead she has focused on the creative process, her artistic autonomy, her relationships and how she uses her time.” The article reveals her to be a woman with a keen sense of business – even as young as her early twenties, Boynton was savy enough to ask for royalties from the company who first picked up her illustrations for their greeting cards, and good thing too as these cards had an unprecedented level of success. Simultaneously she is also a woman who won’t agree to overmerchandizing her characters, and keeps her business intimate, manageable, and ultimately more enjoyable for her. Quality of life really guides her decisions, not greed. What a great message to find on page one of the business section of a mainstream paper like the NY Times. It gives me hope that artists can be part of shapeshifting the values of our culture toward something more holistic – a world in which money is just one measure of success along with time, connection, and even whimsy.