An Extraordinary Life: In Memory of Paula Hocks
Largely a self taught artist, Hocks studied the work of Jean Arp, Barbara Hepworth, and the constructions of Kurt Schwitters and Joseph Cornell. She immersed herself in the contemporary religious philosophy of Thomas Merton, forming a life-long friendship with him and his close friend, poet Robert Lax. Hocks recognized the kinship between her art and Surrealist and Dadaist art, gleefully joining in actualizing the possibilities of chance and playful realities. Most importantly, she looked to the writings and friendship of George Steiner for her life-long inspiration and counsel. These advanced thinkers would serve as her panel of experts for life and art. From the earliest work at the Denver Art Museum, Hocks’ works have found their way to such locales as Paris, Budapest, Salerno, Barcelona, and London, as well as major American cities. Bookworks, usually appearing under the umbrella of her own the running women press, can be found in many permanent collections, including those of the International Concrete Poetry Archive at Oxford, The Getty Contemporary Collection in California, the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewit Museum, the Houghton Library at Harvard, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Tate Gallery Special Collections Library in London, University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections of Rare Books, as well as UNM’s [University of New Mexico] Jonson Gallery and Zimmerman Library Special Collections.
In 1977 Hocks merged all of her interests in the medium of the book. Book works were sculptural, three-dimensional form to be handled and held. A book work included personal visual language and texts of poetry and essays. In this art format, Hocks could convey her own unique and perceptive views in dialogue with the written word of revered others. In the name of collage she practiced great license to borrow and bring together image and written word from the minds and visions of others to exist in relationship with her own. Hocks’ photomontage images are a melding of her personal insights, wit and visual harmonies to establish an art unique to the field of photography.You are invited to enter a place of neglected worlds, witty and brilliant perceptions — a place of poetic interpretation and joyous celebration. Behold her art — you are entering the mind and heart of Paula Hocks.
Tiska Blankenship, June 2003 Guest Curator
Jonson Gallery, University of New Mexico
Paula Hocks’ Running Women Press
Sacred Stitches: Running Women Press
Elizabeth Cook-Romero/ Santa Fe New Mexican Pasatiempo ~ February 18-24, 2005
Paula Hocks, artist and founder of Running Women Press, made books printed on copy machines. Her books’ bindings often consisted of a few stitches, yet, in spite of their ephemeral look, they are complex works of art.Material printed on copy machines has a disposable feel, but Hocks wasn’t trying to make affordable, throwaway art, said bookbinder Priscilla Spitler, a longtime friend of Hocks and now executor of the deceased artist’s works. “She viewed her works as precious even in the chapbook form. They were almost sacred to her. For Paula it was the whole piece, not just the binding. It was the text, the image, and how it all worked together.”
“I would say there was a resurgence in handmade books in the ‘70s. Paula was experimenting with new printing technology,” Spitler said. “From the ‘70s until her death in 2003, you can see the whole history of photocopy technology in her work. As her work matured, the photocopy technology matured.”Hocks’ favorite medium was collage, and most of her books were photocopied from collages. Occasionally she would reissue a book after the technology had changed enough to give the new edition a different feel from the first one, Spitler said. At other times, Hocks issued books in two editions, a chapbook using simple homemade construction and a deluxe edition that might be sent out for professional binding.Hocks and Spitler met at book fair at the Santa Fe Bookseller store in 1979. “I purchased one of her books for $50,” Spitler recalled. “Little did I know that was an investment in a lifetime of friendship and collaboration.” An elaborate binding Spitler made for Running Women Press is included in Lasting Impressions: The Private Presses of New Mexico.
Tiska Blankenship, former director of the Jonson Gallery at the University of New Mexico, has curated two shows of Hocks’ collages and books. Hocks, who grew up in Oklahoma, dropped out of high school to take care of her sick mother, Blankenship said. “She always maintained that Oklahoma way of being a lady. She had a photographic memory and read everything, encyclopedias and everything.”Hocks kept every aspect of her technique simple and straightforward. Many of the images in Hocks’ collages were taken with her point-and-shoot camera. “It proves it’s all in the eye,” Blankenship said. “She loved the personal, homemade quality. She used always the same typewriter and her own handwriting.“I know a lot of people in the field worried about whether her materials would hold up. In the earliest black-and-white xerox there was texture in the ink. I called George Eastman House, and they said xerox would last as long as anything.”
Fred Hocks, Artist (1886-1981)
Photo of the artist by Stephen Wells, from a brochure of Hocks’ retrospective show at the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego, October 2-31, 1976.
Always committed to art, Hocks returned to Europe for periods of time, but centered his activities around the artist community in La Jolla and San Diego, California, when he took a position teaching at the school of the Los Angeles Country Art Museum in the 1920s. During W.W.II, he was one of the artists who actually lived and painted in studios on the grounds of Balboa Park, home of the Pan American exposition in 1915. He continued to teach and exhibit in the area until his death at age 95 in 1981. The San Diego Museum of Fine Arts held a retrospective of his works in 1976.


If you are interested in purchasing an original Fred Hocks’ work of art from the archive, contact Priscilla Spitler. Serious inquiries only. Examples of the works appear on this page
