TAWA at 45
The Exhibition
Susan Hockaday
We Join Hands
digital Chromira print, 2022; 27″h x 25″w
Susan Hockaday received her art education at Princeton University, The Museum School in Boston, and Pratt Graphics in NYC. After 43 years in Princeton, she and her husband moved into a barn in nearby Hopewell, which they rebuilt with the help of their son, an architect. Part of the old hayloft became her studio, and they have used the open space in the barn to present over 100 jazz concerts of musicians from New York.
“My art practice reflects the influence of my family, the many years I spent living in the countryside in Missouri, plus 50 summers in rural Nova Scotia. Science, art, and design are all one to me. My focus has always been the intricate patterns and details of the natural world. I have worked in many mediums: drawing, etching, handmade paper, and collage constructions. For the last 25 years photography has been my principal tool. In 2002 I learned about the vast amount of plastic trash in all the oceans and on land masses across the planet. I felt that my work had to change, nature was no longer what it used to be. It was now seriously threatened by pollution and the effects of climate change. The connection between trash, climate change, and nature has become the focus of my work. Plastic is my symbol of the struggle. I experimented with large drawings and photograms but found that photography is the best tool for exploring these relationships. My practice is to arrange a mixture of objects, plastic, natural, industrial, and domestic on a table and photograph them from above. I am fascinated by the design of these disparate artifacts when they come together. The pictures tell stories about the problems we face. They are portraits of us, and our civilization at this time. The photographs are printed in large format as Epson inkjet prints, on Tier 1 paper, at Print Space in New York.