Jim Hodges - New Work

Jim Hodges New Work

As If

by Jane M. Saks Jim Hodges’ drawings are love letters. Not exactly letters of falling in love. More, they are letters about being in love — deep, raw, sometimes rough, but long abiding beauty. They are letters with the temporal quality of travel, anticipation and unexpected arrival. Maybe near miss, gone and never lost, lost and never known, never sent or delivered and accepted without circumstance, carrying reflection, disquietude and hope. They are not places to reside. His drawings are places to live. Like happiness and beauty: porous, perishable and sustaining — holding all, gravity pull and light.

We love letters and letters of love, mysterious journeys inbetween, ones with softness and breath. The shadow of the writing-hand reminds us we were once there and all the body carries within and remembers. Letters full of you, lovely offerings, anticipation and absence, only the trace. A line to you, from you, but not there. There is always something meant to be missing in his meticulous work. Phantom limb, or migrating birds tied to the wrist like a kite string — fragile at times or often with a firm pull. The birds follow you all the days of your life.

They are here and then, strong light, snapped-string, ripped hole or winter, not. Once the tentative light of summer is pulled into autumn, we lose the birds again. Pay attention, the ones that landed secretly in the trees are gone.

A love letter is not casting a net wide. It is not a wide reach of desire, or will, assured something meaningful will surely be caught. It is casting deep, enough, to echo the emotional draw, hesitations and moments’ vibrations, before retreating back.

A love letter is the story of love without the lover, the moment of telling with a void and immense volume. There is always something missing in the love letter, and like migrating birds, we hold their return.

It is the necessity, fierce searching, layered rhythmic beauty in his drawings that follow us. The phantom limb still dangles along the body’s side, breathes through the day. It reminds us of everything that might follow and haunts us with what came before.

It has often been said that the materials in Jim Hodges’ work are modest. Those things over-looked, passed by. The modesty of a tree. The modesty of paper his skin tone, draping chains, torn fist-holes or persistent branches coming from the backside, in. Hand sewn, cut, folded, molded drawings, pared to the bone, essential simple elements in conversation.

The pulp of the paper turns into the tree, the tree into the body.

This is the body that love goes beyond. Of what wears in, but does not wear out.

The modesty of disappearing with a trace. The modesty of tender sculpted paper, carefully tended, the tree-less bark still hugs the tree — curled around its absence then nailed up hard to hang by a chain on the wall. We make room for the nail piercing the wall the way we make room for the insatiable roots of an old tree that tip the corner of the house, crack the sidewalk’s edge and re-arrange our path.

As if. As if, Jim Hodges leafs through the grass mining for the space between the tender blades, the slip of light between the door. As if. Modest as the light the color of love, the color of erasure, the color of staying there, still.

The light in his drawings exploits full and false seasonal promises with stunning possibilities. A light shifting all we see — it strays, vanishes and returns. Materials trace that denote non-material things. The tender winter white that opens the day and ends it early. Now, being pulled into spring giving way to endless memories of vulnerable anticipation, late frost. And, even though the night’s light is reciprocal in its tenderness it may hurt, a bit, to close the day. Before you close, open your mouth one more time. Draw-in the light between the teeth, tender captivity. Hold it there between the flesh; it is not always smooth nor saturated with kindness, but you know this.

There is wind between your teeth, so still, so flat. There is a point between here and near the still, buried beside the night.

He understands that the most beautiful order of the world is the proximity and purposefully selected gathering of things often less significant in themselves. Jim gathers pieces and creates work with skill and grace—extraordinary pieces: words outside the frame, sounds from the next room and holes underground. He does not make meaning; he finds meaning deep inside the tree, the paper pulp, the hanging chain, the wood veneer, the back of the paper. His drawings are the door and all that comes through.

His love letters are the shape and sound of coming from the outside in. He sees it without listening. Says it enough, he hears it without looking. In his work, he is able to discern his way down deeper than what is stopping us. He comes inside, and turns it inside out.

1

Exhibition Jim Hodges New Work June 3 – July 31, 2010 Opening reception: Thursday, June 3 About the artist Jim Hodges (b. 1957, Spokane, Washington) lives and works in New York City. This exhibition at Dieu Donné follows the artist’s October 2009 solo exhibition “Love, Etc,” at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which traveled to the Fondazione Bevilacqua in Venice, and will be at the Camden Arts Center in London in June of 2010. The artist is represented by Barbara Gladstone Gallery, who presented his recent work in Brussels in March 2010. Hodges work is featured in permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. and the Tate in London, among others.

About the author Jane M. Saks (Executive Director, Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media, Columbia College Chicago) is a feminist activist, cultural advocate, writer and educator who challenges and champions issues of gender, sexuality, human rights, race and power within the worlds of arts and culture, politics and civil rights, academia and philanthropy. She serves on several boards including: Co-Chair, Chicago Foundation for Women’s Lesbian Leadership Council, Radio Diaries of National Public Radio, US Friends of the South Africa Constitutional Court Architecture and Art Programme Committee, and Chicago Committee of the African Women’s Development Fund. She is a published poet and, as a writer collaborates with artists including: Jim Hodges, Kerry James Marshal and Inigo Manglano-Ovalle. She is an invited lecturer at civic, cultural and educational institutions, and recipient of numerous awards and honors including: a 2005 Leadership Greater Chicago Fellowship; 2008 Woman of Valor Award; 2009 Business and Professional People for the Public Interest “40 Who’ve Made A Difference Award;” a 2009 inductee to the City of Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame; and a 2010 Impact Award from the Chicago Foundation for Women. In 2010, the Institute received the Leppen Leadership Award, given by About Face Theatre and About Face Youth Theatre, in recognition of its extraordinary support, programming, and work with LGBTQA youth.

Dieu Donné Founded in 1976, Dieu Donné is a nonprofit artist workspace dedicated to the creation, promotion, and preservation of contemporary art in the hand-papermaking process. In support of this mission, Dieu Donné collaborates with artists and partners with the professional visual arts community.

Support for Dieu Donné The artistic and educational programs at Dieu Donné are made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; and foundation support including: Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Cowles Family Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Mary Biddle Duke Foundation, the Dedalus Foundation, Inc., the Greenwall Foundation, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, Joan K. Davidson (The J.M. Kaplan Fund), the Lauder Foundation, Kathy and Richard S. Fuld, Jr., the Northern Piedmont Community Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, StratREAL Foundation US, the Daniel M. Neidich and Brooke Garber Foundation, May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Inc., the Marden Family Foundation, Inc., the Renaissance Charitable Foundation (The Dresner Sadaka Family Fund), the New York Community Trust, Cashin Family Fund, Nancy and Fred Poses, Hurst Family Foundation, Susan Hess, Lenard & Fern Tessler, Carol and Michael Weisman, The Dorothea L. Leonhardt Foundation, Inc., Anthony Sosnick, Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy, and individual donors.

Design Meryl Friedman; visual identity by Project Projects Photography Work: Tim Hailand Process: Kat Savage Copyright Publication © 2010 Dieu Donné Essay © 2010 Jane M. Saks

Dieu Donné 315 West 36th Street New York, ny 10018 t 212 226 0573 f 212 226 6088 www.dieudonne.org

Cover Detail of Pulp, 2009, handmade paper and cast paper. 60 × 40 × 5 inches.

Inside cover Anymore, 2010, handmade paper and cast paper with beva adhesive. 23 × 18 × 5.5 inches.

Inside back cover Nail, 2010, handmade paper with beva adhesive. 36 × 15 × 2.5 inches.

Back cover Creep, 2009, handmade paper with beva adhesive.

60.25 × 40.125 × 7.5 inches.

2

3