Life Imitates Art Using Wood
A person can shift between various identities daily. One moment you’re a mother, then a sister, then an artist, or a student, but at the end of the day, the variety of identities a person changes into is seen as a mundane part of life, something that is expected to be juggled and lived with.
Latoya M. Hobbs is someone whose identity seems to change just as much in a day as the average person, between her roles as a mother, artist, educator, and wife. Her “Carving Out Time” collection romanticizes her and her family’s average day-to-day life on eight-by-twelve-foot wood panels that can be seen at the Milwaukee Art Museum(MAM) until January 25, 2025.
Carving Out Time depicts Hobbs’s family waking up, the children being homeschooled, having dinner as a family, bedtime for her sons, and showing Hobbs in her studio surrounded by her art.
Nikki Otten is the exhibit coordinator for MAM and the one responsible for bringing the collection to the museum.
“I think that one thing I’m really drawn to with art history is how we can look back in time at how people used to live so it’s important to depict people in daily life so people now can resonate with it,” said Otten. “I think it helps to form empathy for people today but also in the future people can see that this is how we lived every day and there wasn’t always this big historical event.”
Beauty in Representation
The journey to bringing the pieces to MAM began in 2021 in Minneapolis at the Highpoint Center when Otten saw Hobb’s work for the first time.
“Beyond the scale, the subject matter was really interesting to me because still in art history, there aren’t very many representations of Black people in a non-traumatic way so I think I was really struck by Hobbs depicting her everyday life,” said Otten. “It’s not always something represented in museums very often so I think it’s nice for people to see a positive example of Black People living a daily life and not necessarily experiencing trauma.”
Representation is a core message in the pieces of the Carving Out Time collection with careful attention to how the small details are translated into the work. When it came to showing the images of her sons, they were given the freedom to choose what clothes they wanted to be seen in, giving them the autonomy to shape their image as young Black boys.
“She said that that was important to her so her sons see themselves represented in a museum and so that they would feel more comfortable accessing museum spaces in the future,” said Otten.
Images of influential Black artists are also found within the Carving Out Time pieces including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Elizabeth Catlett, Aima Thomas, Margaret Taylor Burroughs, and Valerie Maynard to aid the idea of representation that is at the core of the exhibit.
Connecting Through Technique
The themes of representation and embracing everyday life are woven into the pieces. For Hobbs, carving the wood symbolized the work she would have to do as an artist to carve away negative stereotypes Black women face every day.
The prints and carvings are accompanied by a video made by Hobbs and her husband, artist Ariston Jacks. The video details the process of creating the works of art allowing visitors to connect more deeply not only with the artwork but with the artist herself.
“She printed three copies of the wood panels, and so Harvard acquired one, Hobbs is keeping one in her archives, and the Milwaukee Art Museum acquired the third,” said Otten. “ So there’s not that many of these in the world so we are happy to have it in the collection and have it available to the community.”
To learn more about the collection click here.
Maria Peralta-Arellano is a Milwaukee-native journalist who focuses on sharing news from her local communities. She dedicates her work to accessibility and producing bilingual coverage focused on arts, culture, and politics. She looks to explore her community through a journalistic and creative lens.
