Allyson Ross
bio
After graduating from Vassar College, Susan Hockaday studied etching at Yale University and the Pratt Graphics Center in New York City. She later studied photography at Princeton University, papermaking at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and spent the 1986-87 academic year at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. During two sabbatical years with her family in Holland, she exhibited and worked at the Amsterdam Graphics Atelier. While living in England in 1982, and lecturing in China and Japan, she developed an interest in papermaking. In 1974, she was awarded the W. K. Rose Fellowship from Vassar College. Susan Hockaday won fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts in 1982 and 1986. Susan Hockaday has had more than 25 solo exhibits in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Nova Scotia, Canada. Her work is in many public and private collections, including the Art Museum at Princeton University. She has been affiliated with SOHO20 for many years.
statement
The artwork of Susan Hockaday has always focused on structures and patterns found in the natural world. She has worked in many media, but for the last twelve years has used photographs to make layered images of water, foliage, and other elements of landscape. Over time, she has become increasingly aware of the destruction of the natural world by man’s uncontrolled activities, even in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, where she lives in the summer and does much of her work. Recently, she has begun to add painted or printed marks to the surface of the finished photographs to introduce the idea of the disturbance of nature. These narrative elements indicate invasion and encroachment. They add another level of meaning and tension to the images, which are collectively titled “Turning on Nature.” For the last year she has photographed the waterways and harbors around Manhattan from a small airplane, recording some more extreme examples of Nature Disturbed. Ms Hockaday takes all her photographs with hand held cameras, and prints the final chromogenic prints in a studio in New York City.
work
LILIES, 2017, Digital C Print, 39×30
NET BAGS, 2017, Digital C Print, 30×39
MONKSHOOD, 2017, Digital C Print, 30×39