Category Archives: Portfolio

‘Ubiquitous Seed’ is a thirty-foot/nine-meter diameter circle of radiating arcs, echoing the Ancient Egyptian symbol for the seed. At its center is a ‘sitting stone’, a quiet place for one to step out of the mayhem of our world. Take the pathway leading to the center to sit, to contemplate, to meditate, or to just be.

The initial inspiration for the work arose from a concern that we are losing the essential diversity and quality of our seeds. Seed Banks holding the worlds precious and ancient seeds, crucial to our healthy survival, are being destroyed in war zones around the world and are now at risk from global warming. As we have seen recently, the global seed bank buried deep in the permafrost at Svalbard, in Norway’s Arctic, was recently flooded by melt water, due to an excessive rise in temperatures in the arctic this winter. Central to ‘Ubiquitous Seed’ is the wider symbolism of the ‘seed of life’ holding the blueprint for a new Humanity, guardians of a vibrant and healthy planet.

Sonoma fieldstone, wood chips, (from Cypress trees, victims of recent winter storms) gravel, Rhyolite central stone.

Video
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rzv31yrjufeubby/Ubiquitous%20Seed%20Rydell%20HD-2%20copy.mp4?dl=0

ZERO WAITING, a video collaboration between visual artist Diana Hobson and experimental sound designer Susan Alexjander, explores the phenomenon of Zero Point Energy. It weaves together sound and visual symbolism to evoke the Quantum Field from which all life emerges.
The installation was first presented at the Salt Gallery, Hayle, Cornwall, England in August 2005.
In opposite moving cycles, two identical videos, one playing in reverse, create a symbolic journey connecting everything we see with our conscious eye to all things outside our comprehension, from our inner space to the deep space of the universe. Sound frequencies capture the invisible, bringing knowledge to our senses like the quantum imprinting of waves upon each other.

With video as our medium, we present the viewpoint that everything that exists emerges from the same source and life in all its forms, from micro to macro, is inextricably connected.

INTO BEING – THE RIVER
Into Being the river, first shown at the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz, California in 2003, was a collaboration between visual artist Diana Hobson and Composer Susan Alexjander. It is a metaphorical journey from the first emergence of life on our planet. Gestating in the dark waters, life awakens into consciousness as the sun sees itself reflected in the river.

“In a video installation of the element of water (the river), poetry, with sounds and frequencies of elemental and subtle form, we hope to trigger and awaken in our ancient consciousness a cellular memory as old as First Thought, a strand of vital DNA in the multidimensional chain of being” ( from press coverage – DH 2003).

“We remember,
another place,
swathed in the mists of the un- named.
a point of consciousness
retrieved from the aeons of time,
not audible before this moment”.

Within the fern house, the heat, the smell of the earth,dense foliage and the filtering light bombard the senses. Under the canopy of the tall tree ferns, clusters of glass spirals (the language of these trees) collect and diffuse natural Light.  Within a secluded corner, circled by small tree ferns, glass rods form the pattern of a Diatom, the ancient single cell organism, which still inhabits the oceans, is  embedded to the earth. From this place a primitive vortex of sounds emerge, awakening ancient collective memory and evoking a primal connection to our place in the natural order of life.

Elemental Traces were installations at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, Scotland in 2000 by artists Diana Hobson in the Fern House, Keiko Mukaide in the Arid Lands House and Lens based artist, Craig Mackay in the Caledonian Hall.

Beam Balance

Fingerhold

One The Edge

Finderhold Detail

DELICATE BALANCE SERIES – red concrete, glass and bronze. As the work developed, so did the growing awareness of the crisis point we, Mankind have reached in our relationship to the planet.“Pillars of red concrete rise up from the earth – man-made structures becoming glass.

The text of Language of Light, a book accompanying the exhibition of the same name, begins with  journal entries that follow the work through it’s entire

development.  Poetry accompanies images of the work.

Journal entry: 3rd November 1993
“I still find that new ideas include glass. The difference is how I’m thinking of it (glass)
not as form but as a container for the formless, and in itself not containing it but defining it – (light). Light (spirit/energy) is defined by it…….It is the transformational element……to define the formless, the intangible”.

The work is described below by Karen Chambers in her article, Diana Hobson Speaking Clearly, Neues Glas magazine, April 1996.

“Looking at sculptor Diana Hobson’s work makes me wish I were a poet for prose seems inadequate to discuss her work. In the ‘Language of Light’ series her work appears like poetry itself made physical. It is a haiku in glass, ceramic, stone wood and bronze”

For the newly revived Neues Glass magazine see – Neus Glass/New Glass/Art and Architecture – http://www.neuesglas-newglass.com

Language of Light book – www.blurb.com/b/5143246-language-of-light‎