Artist Talk: LaToya Hobbs at the Figge Art Museum -- August 18.

Thursday, August 18, 6:30 p.m.

Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second Street, Davenport IA

A Baltimore-based talent renowned for her large-scale portraits of Black women will be the showcased guest in an August 18 Artist Talk at Davenport's Figge Art Museum, with LaToya Hobbs discussing her works including The Everyday, a portrait acquired for the venue's permanent collection earlier this year.

An artist, wife, and mother of two from Little Rock, Arkansas, Hobbs received her BA in Painting from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and MFA in Printmaking from Purdue University. Her work deals with figurative imagery that addresses the ideas of beauty, cultural identity, and womanhood as they relate to women of the African Diaspora, and Hobbs creates fluid and symbiotic relationships between her printmaking and painting practice, producing works that are marked by texture, color and bold patterns. Her exhibition record includes several national and international exhibits in locations such as the National Art Gallery of Namibia in Windhoek; the Prizm Art Fair in Miami, Florida; the Community Folk Arts Center in Syracuse, New York; the Woman Made Gallery in Chicago; and the Sophia Wananmaker Galleries in San Jose, Costa Rica.

Hobbs' work has been featured in Transition: An International Review, a publication of the W.E.B. Dubois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, and is also housed in private and public collections such as the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art, the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, the National Art Gallery of Namibia, the Getty Research Institute, and the Milwaukee Art Museum. Other notable accomplishments include a 2019 Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council; a 2019 Artist Travel Grant awarded by the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore; a 2020 Artist in Residence award at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans; and receiving the 2020 Jane and Walter Sondhiem Artscape Prize. Additionally, Hobbs devotes her time to teaching and inspiring young artists as a professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and she is a founding member of Black Women of Print, a collective whose vision is to make visible the narratives and works of Black women printmakers past, present, and future.

In her Web site's artist statement at LaToyaMHobbs.com, she says, "As a painter and printmaker, I use figurative imagery to facilitate an ongoing dialogue about the Black female body in the hope of showcasing a more balanced perception of our womanhood, one that dismantles prevailing stereotypes. Through portraiture I explore the themes of beauty, spirituality, motherhood and sisterhood. My practice incorporates the production of mixed-media works that seamlessly marry traditional painting and relief printmaking techniques on a single surface. Through these explorations the print matrix functions as an art object rather than mere production tool. These hybrid works employ the use of pattern, color, and texture to provide a visceral experience that is both universal and specific."

The Artist Talk with LaToya Hobbs will take place in the Quad City Bank & Trust Grand Lobby on August 18, admission to the 6:30 p.m. event is free, and more information is available by calling (563)326-7804 and visiting FiggeArtMuseum.org.

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