Mary Daniel Hobson

Mixed Media, Photography

This series, “Invocation,” is about surrender. The willingness to stand in the dark unknown yields an unexpected gift. Here it is feathers—a blessing of beauty and a promise of flight. While making this work, I practiced standing meditation outside at night. If I stood still long enough, a subtle shift would happen and some sense of benevolence would surround me. I wanted these collages—constructed of photo-transparencies, maps, handwriting, stitched tissue and feathers—to honor that feeling of grace.

For over twenty-five years, Mary Daniel Hobson has been exploring mixed media photography. Whether building layered collages, creating intimate still lives or bottling photographs in mineral oil, she delights in the tactile and the symbolic. Uniting all of her work is the belief that art can convey the complexity of our psychological existence, and help us make sense of and navigate an ever-shifting world.

Hobson’s work has been widely exhibited and is in numerous collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the offices of Twitter and the Datz Museum in South Korea. Her monograph, Offerings, was published in 2019 by Datz Press (datzpress.com). Her art also appears in Terry Tempest Williams’ The Hour of Land, (Sarah Crichton Books, 2016) and the limited-edition artist book, The Man in Bogotá, (Pacific Editions, 2015).

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