Lucy Hodgson
Hodgson's first, fully sculptural work consisted of laminated wooden grids that soon took second place to structures woven from saplings, and other flexible organic material such as cane, kudzu and raffia. These pieces evoked shelters, artifacts and implements. They were nonfunctional, but could be imagined as having a place in a preliterate society that has not yet been discovered by the modern world. Subsequently, her materials became less malleable; she began to use wood and to take advantage of the anthropomorphic forms that are found in that material in its natural state with the result that the sculpture referred more to the human form than to material culture.
In the early 1990s, she exhibited some of these wood pieces in New York at the SOHO20 Gallery; the Newhouse Center, Snug Harbor, Staten Island; and in various exhibitions in New England: in Exeter, NH; Deering Park, Portland, ME and South Kingstown, RI. In 1997 she was invited to accompany eighty artists of many different nationalities to do site specific work in an international, environmental symposium in Chung Jiu, South Korea ("Nine Dragons' Festival" ), and in '98 she was part of a smaller group at the "Art in the Garden" Colony in Fony, Hungary.
It was at about this time that the artist began to incorporate cast-off building material in her work. She now uses old shingles, roofing material and window casings in combination with the saplings and tree trunks to further emphasize the conflict between modern culture and nature. Ms. Hodgson exhibited some of this work in the exhibition, "Transitions," at der Zaaijer Gallery in Amsterdam in 1998. More recently, she has been constructing pieces that are a commentary on the viewing, conceptualization and presentation of natural phenomena. "Steeplepeepers," first shown in Exeter, NH, was one of these. In 1999 she presented similar works in an exhibition, "Long Shots" at the SOHO20 Gallery in New York.
Since then, she has participated in a residency at The Kingdom Art Center in Maine and in the statewide "Convergence 2001" in Rhode Island with an installation, "Swallowed Hole" that is current at the South County Center for Art in South Kingstown. In the spring and summer of 2003 she is slated to exhibit a number of pieces in the Netherlands at the Schokland Museum located on the remains of an island which has now become part of the Noordoostpolder, land that was reclaimed from the Zuidersee during and after World War II. The artist works in New York City, Rhode Island and Maine. She exhibits at the SOHO20, Chelsea gallery in New York. In addition to her sculpture, she continues to make prints and monoprints that address environmental issues.