Learn about our other concurrent exhibit: Duality

Paths Crossed

PROJECT STATEMENT
Paths Crossed is an artistic conversation about migration and the continuity of culture. Through their dialogue, Kennedy and Hobson create a visual exploration of their individual histories of migration and cultural survival that plumbs the depth and breadth of African and African American experience. Kennedy, a recent immigrant from war-torn Liberia, and Hobson an African American whose family traces back to eighteenth-Century New Orleans, but has been displaced by Hurricane Katrina, investigate the visceral aspects of their displacement, the ways in which culture brings comfort to the displaced, and the longing to connect to one’s culture of origin, no matter how far removed through time or place.

KYRIN HOBSON
Ask Kyrin Hobson why she balances raising small children with being a working artist. She’ll probably laugh and say it would be much harder not to.

Hobson’s mixed-media and installation work consciously embodies hybridization. In life as in art, she experiments to communicate ideas, drawing from sources that span place, time, sensation and memory.  The work’s conceptual underpinnings, while embracing Western and contemporary art, stem mainly from Black Diaspora cultures in which visual expression is integrated into daily life. Objects and creative acts have special agency to document, memorialize, or affect change. The goal of Hobson’s practice is to make accessible, powerful art with sensibilities that engage and expand mainstream discourse.

Born in Los Angeles, Hobson spent important formative years in her family’s native New Orleans, gaining a rich cultural foundation. She attended University of California, Los Angeles, receiving a degree in Fine Art.  A master’s degree in Museum Studies from New York University followed. Hobson’s career as a studio artist draws heavily from her decade of museum exhibition development experience specializing in African and non-Western art.  Paths Crossed, her first gallery installation, realizes a dream of melding museum approaches with art making to create a full-scaled environment.

Since moving to Minneapolis in 2003 Hobson has pursued studio art exclusively. Participating in the Women’s Art Institute at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design as a student in 2003 and as a teaching assistant in 2006. Hobson has shown with the Women Artists Registry of Minnesota, Hamline University and the Bloomington Art Center and lectured at the Wisdom Ways Conference of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. She, along with collaborator Catherine Kennedy is a recipient of the Minnesota State Arts Board Cultural Community Partnership Grant.

CATHERINE KENNEDY
Forms, icons, realities—all inspire Catherine Kennedy’s art. Her abstractions and realistic works combine sources as varied as the bible, organic and non-organic shapes and traditional icons past and present. Kennedy employs scale as well as diverse materials to fully explore her subjects. The work most recently has taken a shift to examining the causes and effects of human conditions… war, sickness and disaster through large scale mixed–media and video installations.

A native of Liberia, West Africa, and Kennedy grew up in neighboring Ivory Coast having fled the war that erupted in her country of birth.  Ivory Coast, she believes, is the cradle of her artistic endeavors because it was there she learned the importance of tradition as an embodiment of heritage that makes everything you do worthwhile. Before leaving Africa, Kennedy obtained an Associate Degree, in General Artistic Studies, at the Center for Artistic and Cultural Studies.

Catherine migrated to the United States of America in 2002 and settled in Minneapolis Minnesota. She earned a BFA in Sculpture at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and was nominated as outstanding student in contemporary sculpture. She interned at the Forecast Public Art Works in 2005. Shortly after, she was awarded a TA position at the Women’s Art Institute. Recently a Cultural Community Partnership grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board was awarded to create this collaboration at the Catherine G. Murphy gallery along with artist, partner, and friend Kyrin Hobson.  She has continued since, to participate actively within the art community of the twin cities.

Catherine plans to use sculpture in its many forms to recreate reality as she personally sees it. She will continue to experiment with the many new and exciting techniques available to her, as well as reminding herself of the tradition that she has come from. Combining traditions and new ideas enhances creativity. This synthesis is needed to be more or less suggestive than radical, which is a balance she tries to achieve in her work.

Catherine Kennedy Acknowledgements
Thanks and appreciations go out to the following people who have been inspirational resources for my development: Kyrin Hobson, Patricia Briggs, Abdule Dukule, Judy Smock, Kukuma Kennedy, Karen Wirth, Margaret McGee, and Don Myre. Thanks also to the MCAD Faculty and the supportive, creative staff of the College of St. Catherine and the Women’s Art Institute. Overall, thanks to the States Arts Board for making this all possible. Anyone else whose name I did not mention, know that you are all appreciated.

Learn about our other concurrent exhibit: Duality