An Extraordinary Life: In Memory of Paula Hocks

1916 – 2003 Paula Hocks, an American photographer and book artist, first embarked on her artistic career in Denver during the early 1940s. Though her major work would evolve into photomontage and the artist’s book, her first art was sculpture. From Colorado, she soon relocated to a more developed art environment in La Jolla, California. The new surroundings nurtured her work of the 1950s and she began to create the figurative stone carvings and wood sculptures which were akin to those of Gaudier-Brezeska and Constantine Brancusi whom she greatly admired. Even as she continued her interest in sculpture, she began to explore abstract form through painting and collage. Throughout the next two decades she balanced her interest in visual art with a world of words found in poetry, language, and philosophy.

Largely a self taught artist, Hocks studied the work of Jean Arp, Barbara Hepworth, and the constructions of Kurt Schwitters and Joseph Cornell. She immersed herself in the contemporary religious philosophy of Thomas Merton, forming a life-long friendship with him and his close friend, poet Robert Lax. Hocks recognized the kinship between her art and Surrealist and Dadaist art, gleefully joining in actualizing the possibilities of chance and playful realities. Most importantly, she looked to the writings and friendship of George Steiner for her life-long inspiration and counsel. These advanced thinkers would serve as her panel of experts for life and art. From the earliest work at the Denver Art Museum, Hocks’ works have found their way to such locales as Paris, Budapest, Salerno, Barcelona, and London, as well as major American cities. Bookworks, usually appearing under the umbrella of her own the running women press, can be found in many permanent collections, including those of the International Concrete Poetry Archive at Oxford, The Getty Contemporary Collection in California, the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewit Museum, the Houghton Library at Harvard, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Tate Gallery Special Collections Library in London, University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections of Rare Books, as well as UNM’s [University of New Mexico] Jonson Gallery and Zimmerman Library Special Collections.

In 1977 Hocks merged all of her interests in the medium of the book. Book works were sculptural, three-dimensional form to be handled and held. A book work included personal visual language and texts of poetry and essays. In this art format, Hocks could convey her own unique and perceptive views in dialogue with the written word of revered others. In the name of collage she practiced great license to borrow and bring together image and written word from the minds and visions of others to exist in relationship with her own. Hocks’ photomontage images are a melding of her personal insights, wit and visual harmonies to establish an art unique to the field of photography.You are invited to enter a place of neglected worlds, witty and brilliant perceptions — a place of poetic interpretation and joyous celebration. Behold her art — you are entering the mind and heart of Paula Hocks.

Tiska Blankenship, June 2003 Guest Curator
Jonson Gallery, University of New Mexico