Colette Hosmer - Hancher Auditorium, The University of Iowa / LandEscape Art Review, London / International Sculpture Biennale, Australia


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COLETTE HOSMER: HANCHER AUDITORIUM, IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY, WELLSPRING: MONUMENTAL, SITE-SPECIFIC SCULPTURE DEDICATION, IOWA CITY, IOWA / LANDESCAPE ART REVIEW, LANDESCAPE MEETS COLETTE HOSMER, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM / INTERNATIONAL SCULPTURE BIENNALE, A SENSE OF PLACE, LORNE, AUSTRALIA

Photographer Credit: Zakery Neumann

Colette Hosmer's Wellspring at Hancher Auditorium

Hancher Auditorium (the crown jewel of The University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa) has unveiled a monumental, outdoor, sculpture installation by Santa Fe, New Mexico artist, Colette Hosmer.

Hosmer's concept, Wellspring, represents the abundant source of creative energy flowing from Hancher Auditorium and into the community. Widely recognized for commissioning new works of dance, music and theater, Hancher reaches audiences well beyond the The University of Iowa. This site-specific sculpture, comprised of thirty granite forms, representing the native fish of the Iowa River, welcomes visitors to enter the breathtaking architecture of Hancher Auditorium, which was dreamed into reality by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects.

Join us! Dedication Ceremony September 10, 2021

Immense Gratitude to:

David and Noreen Revier
Charles C. Swanson, Executive Director of Hancher Auditorium
David C. Brown, Manager of Landscape Services

Photographer Credit: Justin A. Torner

Hello Colette and welcome to LandEscape. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would like to invite our readers to visit http://colettehosmer.com in order to get a wide idea about your multifaceted artistic production, and we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and you studied art at the University of North Dakota and at Linn-Benton College: how did those formative years influence your evolution as an artist and help you to develop your attitude to experiment? Moreover, how does your cultural substratum direct your current artistic research? To describe my art education as “solid formal training” would be a stretch. Attending the University of North Dakota was, for me, analogous to landing in a foreign country without knowing the culture or the language. Instead, my formative years began at root level.

I was born into a small rural community in north central North Dakota and, along with my two older sisters, grew up in the same house in which our father was raised. My mother came from a farm 13 miles away, not far from where her French-Canadian grandparents homesteaded in the late 1800’s. The first big Dakota Territory settlement “boom” also brought Norwegian and German settlers. Our town (population 600) spilled from the foothills of the Turtle Mountains – a glacier-formed, pond and stream studded plateau of hills that straddled the Canadian border. And, just north of town, the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation spread across the hills and wetlands. That place and time provided the cultural substratum that influenced my career. The prairie shot off flat as an ocean to the south. North America’s central bird migratory flyway passed directly overhead – a portion of which landed on our dinner table each fall hunting season. We fished winter and summer. It was normal in that time and place to experience the transition from life to death to food. Drawing, painting and working with clay felt as natural as catching minnows in the creek near my home. I was equally intrigued with art and the natural environment. Linn-Benton College came on the heels of a 9-year marriage. I gathered up my son and daughter and moved to Oregon where my oldest sister encouraged me to take a couple of art classes while I acclimated to a new life. New life indeed! I loved every minute of the three years spent at LBC – my first art-community experience. Three art professors, along with another student and I, built a gypsy bronze foundry, where we cast our work in bronze after class hours. I was hooked.

Linn-Benton became a launching pad for a move to Santa Fe, New Mexico. There I found work in the gift shop of the Museum of Fine Arts. My lunch hours were spent perusing the changing exhibitions. A year later, I graduated to the next level of my irregular education – Shidoni, a bronze casting foundry and gallery with eight acres of monumental sculpture gardens located a few miles north of Santa Fe. All foundry and gallery employees, most of whom were struggling artists, were offered the gift of utilizing the foundry facilities to produce their own art on their own time. An early cast bronze body of work, Contemporary Fossils, included a complete cat skeleton imbedded in clay-modeled “stone,” wearing a collar and bell. After eight years with Shidoni (the last three years as Director of the new Contemporary Gallery), my “science” side wanted equal time. I accepted an opportunity to move to San Francisco for a year to direct Neurotechnologies Research Institute – a non-profit designed to study brain-influencing devices. Upon returning home to Santa Fe, I was faced with finding employment again or taking the plunge – trading job security for an opportunity to create. My previous jobs took precedence over my time and energy and I was looking for a way to change that. I had no money. After a few sleepless nights fighting near paralysis, I made a decision. The Santa Fe New Mexican had an opening for a newspaper delivery person. I sat for the interview and got the job. A few weeks later, I added a second route to the first. I rose at 3:00 a.m. each morning, picked-up my newspaper bundles, delivered the last paper at 7:30 a.m. and headed home. A notebook traveled on the seat beside me as I delivered papers…and soon it was filled with sketches, notes, thoughts. Santa Fe was asleep, and I had the world to myself. Later, I added a third job as “girl Friday” to a rich lady. I fed her numerous dogs and cats, bought her groceries, cleaned her pool and did her yard work. I had from 11:00 a.m. until a 7:30 bedtime – eight glorious hours – to spend in my studio. My head and heart were liberated. Creative freedom – the ability to work without the influence of outside persuasion, rules and obligations – is a wonderful thing. I followed wherever inspiration led.

The body of works that we have selected for this special edition of LandEscape, and those that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article, have at once captured our attention in the way they provide the viewers with such an immersive and multilayered visual experience: When walking our readers through your usual setup and process, would you tell us how did you develop your initial idea? The untamed geography of northern New Mexico’s mountains, arroyos and the color-splashed Chinle Formation provided both raw materials and inspiration. My studio came to reflect the natural world as I hauled bones, rocks, soil and vegetation back to my studio from my wanderings. I built a “beetle ranch” – a humidified, heat-controlled environment for tens of thousands of Dermestid beetles that happily assisted me in preparing articulated skeletons. These industrious little insects cleaned skeletons in university Zoology laboratories, on the plains of Africa and in my studio as well. I was influenced by my environment, whether I was in the studio or the natural world. When my brain offered “ideas,” they often felt calculated. I learned to give my intellect a back seat and allowed inspiration to surface through the senses.

We have appreciated the way your artworks invite viewers to elaborate personal associations, and that provide your works with a unique aesthetic identity. New York City based artist Lydia Dona once stated that in order to make art today one has to reevaluate the conceptual language behind the mechanism of art making itself: do you create your works gesturally, instinctively? Or do you methodically transpose geometric schemes? In particular, how do you consider the relation between the nature of the concepts that you explore in your artistic research and the physical aspect of your daily practice as an artist?

I generally begin by working in the studio until a direction takes form. The aspect of seeing – moving my hands, activating my senses – is the method I use to create. I often have to discard initial work as one step progresses to the next. Over time, the process of physically engaging with the materials at hand can instinctually open the door to a body of work. I have produced exhibitions while living in China, where a typical day began with an early morning trip to the nearest food market. These markets are centuries-old bazaars where long aisles of tables display fresh pigs, chickens, ducks and goats, with various parts hung from hand-forged hooks, or were stacked neatly, as in concentric circles of chicken gizzards that always reminded me of lotus blossoms. Other lanes trafficked in seafood (much of it swimming in aerated tubs) or vibrant mounds of fresh vegetables, medicinal herbs and fruit. A few hours wandering through one of these markets was always an invigorating experience. The cacophony of sounds (chopping, bargaining, birdsong and motorbikes) mixed with the sights, tastes and smells, all melded into a sublime racket of life.

Your sapient use of references to easily recognizable figures, such as parts of the human body and stylized fish, give your artworks such a unique allegorical quality: of what importance are symbols and metaphors in your artistic research?

Cover and Feature Article

LandEscape Art Review, London

LandEscape Meets Colette Hosmer

Special Edition, November 2020

An Interview by Josh Ryder, Curator
and Mellisa C. Hilborn, Curator

Colette Hosmer's "Wellspring" Unveiled at Hancher Auditorium

Hancher Auditorium, The University of Iowa
Formal Dedication September 10, 2021
Iowa City, Iowa

Colette Hosmer and Stevens Vaughn, an on-site collaboration

The Seventh International Lorne Sculpture Biennale, Australia

The Seventh International Lorne Sculpture Biennale:
A Sense of Place
Lorne, Australia
October 30 - November 21, 2021

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