_heights arts_ Blog

spotlight

SPOTLIGHT: Todd Hoak

Friday, February 1 – Sunday, March 17, 2019

Todd Hoak’s drawing assemblages are created from other drawings cut apart and reorganized to create a “Frankenstein Cubist” view. Duplicated facial features give the viewer a sense of unease and at the same time, the inability to look away. He draws with graphite on paper and a scroll saw blade on patinated wood panels. This sensitive and beautiful body of work will be on display at Heights Arts in Cleveland Heights.

“In first grade I sculpted a head of Richard Nixon from self hardening clay, my mother kept it until she passed away. In third grade, I drew the best Jesus in my class, received critical acclaim from my classmates, Sister Colette wasn’t sold.

It always starts with the same way, usually a portrait in the form of sketches, drawings, paintings from memory with the occasional glimpse at an ear, a nose or an eye from life, from a photograph or from a film. Then boredom sets in, restlessness, followed by the inability to just leave it alone. Then comes the erasure, the cutting, more erasure, layering, gluing, more cutting, erasure…seemingly endless editing which often leads to a mess but occasionally is something worth keeping.

At the root of my work is a general unease and restlessness, as a result I feel that each work is only one fragment of the collective whole. The human form serves well as a vehicle for what it is I am trying to convey through mark making. This small body of work represents a new direction a lifetime in the making.”

–Todd Hoak

Facebook Comments