The Lopez Island Library is proud to present the work of artist Nathan Hodges.
Artist’s Statement:
” All my art work comes from an inherent urge to bring something into this reality, using my hands to follow a feeling and drag it across the border from some unknown place. I guess that humans have felt that way for a long time. Some kind of extra unease that keeps us wandering and dreaming, restless. So as far back as we can figure we’ve used our energies and time and the materials we find around us to express that something else that swims around just underneath the deepest lakes of our collective consciousness. I think of the things I create as art for the simple reason that they’re not intended to serve any function beyond their creation and existence as objects. If anything, they’re sort of postcards I send back to myself from a temporary fugue state of focused, nonsensical creative energy. That is, this art doesn’t pay the bills! Nor does it quiet my newborn son, and again it doesn’t seem that helpful in doing the dishes, but I’ve found over the years that if I sneak off every now and again and grab something out of my imagination and (as quick as I can!) get into a physical form then all those other things I get to do with my time are somehow more fulfilling, heightened, more light. I guess I feel that there’s a part of myself that can only communicate to the rest of me by making art. Each piece I make lives on in a dialogue with that part of me, looking for resonance beyond words and the day to day, trying to open that door, however brief, into something else.”
Artist’s Bio
“I was born and raised in the remote mountains of southern Oregon and spent most of my youth in the forest and creek. I earned a B.S. at Portland State University with a focus on urban hydrology and the ecology of terrestrial mollusks. After graduation I spent time in the non-profit sector working on invertebrate conservation issues. Then I moved to Berkeley for graduate school. Three years of research and practice at UC Berkeley earned me a Masters in Landscape Architecture. I spent two years doing small design build projects in the East Bay with my wife. I then moved to Washington State to work as an environmental consultant and designer with Kwiaht. Now my wife and I own and run Barn Owl Bakery, and I get to build little shacks, grow some grain, spend time with my two kids and occasionally make some art. I am interested in process-based site building, stewardship as design, human-power, informality & marginal innovation, bio-engineering, micro-infrastructures, mystical gardening practices, ecological energetics, bioremediation, and snails.”
Also find attached a couple images that may work for the poster, feel free to choose from them. I have them in higher resolution formats if needed.
I’ve given a talk before on the general field of Land Art and how it relates to my own work, but it requires a powerpoint and a sit-down kind of situation. It sounds like the artist’s talk is more informal and is part of the larger reception?