Barbara Hocker is a Connecticut native with extensive experience creating and exhibiting work, including solo shows and projects in Hartford, New Haven, Newport, and Boston. She has work in several corporate and private collections, including the permanent collection of The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan and several related hospitals in New York and New Jersey. Awards received include an Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Office of the Arts, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Greater Hartford Arts Council, a Creation of New Work Initiative Grant from the Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation, and an Artist Resource Trust Fellowship from the Berkshire Taconic Foundation. She holds a degree in Fibers from Syracuse University’s College of Visual & Performing Arts and attended Cranbrook Academy of Arts. Barbara lives in Bolton, CT and her studio is in Hartford. Her art process has been informed by her practice of Yoga, Tai Chi and Qi Gong for more than 25 years.
About
“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?" That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Viewers have often told me that my work is very peaceful, quiet, and serene. I think this comes from my love of being alone in the woods or at the shore and trying to bring that feeling to my art making. My ongoing practice of Tai Chi/Qi Gong/meditation and study of East Asian metaphysics and aesthetics also inform my art practice. Yin and yang, being and nonbeing, stillness and movement, light and dark, sea and sky, surface and depth, artist and viewer, self and nature - I am interested in exploring how one can see beyond polarities to sense the invisible and mysterious unity underlying them.
The Woven Water pieces combine photographs and monotypes on rice paper that are cut into strips and woven together, then held together with encaustic medium. The wax makes the paper translucent and blends the images together. These are created from images of water that I capture with various digital cameras and lenses. The layering of the photographs with loosely hand painted brush strokes creates a sense of depth, which is enhanced by the actual layering developed by the weaving process. The most recent Woven Water pieces are mounted on panel.
I also like to explore different book formats and binding techniques ranging from hardcover accordion fold books to sculptures which use bookbinding sensibilities or techniques. The handmade books use the same image-making techniques as the woven pieces - inkjet printed digital photographs of rivers, lakes, and sea are broken up or layered on various papers. Seriality, repetition, scale, and the encoding of time are all present in the building up of the book page by page. The “library” collections, explore the relationship of the individual to the greater whole. Relating back to the process of the woven water pieces, the larger images are cut into strips and bound into separate books, which, while they can be opened and viewed individually, only reveal their complete sense when displayed together.
My most recent series, Indigo Waves, combines slices of photographs collaged together with encaustic wax on panels. These pieces developed out of layering in some books I made. The varying textures and movements of the photographs feel like waves swelling on the ocean to me.
These traces of repeated actions – weaving paper strips over and under each other, tearing and folding pages, or hand sewing book signatures – are traces of meditation and flow. They mark time in the same way that meditation counts breaths and bring my working methods into my spiritual practice, while making that practice concrete.