Linda Hoffman
Refuge
2020
Installation generously supported by Marguerite and Walter Bopp
Bronze
48" x 29" x 28"
Jamestown Playground, Valley Street intersection with library driveway, Jamestown RI 02835
GPS: 41.49825, -71.37398
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About the Work:
Some of the themes I have addressed in my work are climate change, loss of habitat, human migration, immigration, human alienation, and our desire for connection. In my sculpture, Refuge, two endangered species, a young giraffe and a sea turtle are rescuing humanity even though human beings have destroyed their habitat. The animals are helping us with our 'passages' whether to a new land, a new way of life, or safety.
About the Artist:
An honors graduate of Bryn Mawr College with a degree in Fine Arts, Linda Hoffman studied at the Sorbonne and at the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship after graduating from college, she trained for two years in the Noh Theater in Kyoto, Japan.
A lifelong passion for poetry converged in 1981 with her work as a graphic artist in the form of her first sculpture, a poem in cloth, launching an extensive exploration of narrative sculpture incorporating language, natural fibers, wood, stone, and found objects. In 1997, she began using old agricultural tools to create lyrical and poignant sculptures decrying New England’s vanishing agricultural landscape. Represented in museums and private collections, Hoffman has public sculptures installed in towns and cities across the region. Recent sculpture commissions include, Forest Tales Path in Stow, a Healing Harp for the Virginia Thurston Healing Garden in Harvard, and Just Sitting at the Fuller Museum in Brockton.
A contributor to WBUR’s Cognoscenti, Hoffman was a founding editor of Wild Apples, a journal of nature, art, and inquiry. She is the author of three chapbooks of art and poetry, and the letterpress art book, Winter Air, created in memory of her mother, Dr. Annette Weiner. Loom Press published her memoir, The Artist and the Orchard in November 2021.
In 2001, Hoffman and her three children moved into an old farmhouse with an abandoned orchard. Today, Old Frog Pond Farm in Harvard, Massachusetts is one of the few organic pick-your-own orchards in Massachusetts as well as a beautiful venue for seeing outdoor sculpture. Chronicle Channel 5 has featured the farm as one of the best places to see outdoor sculpture in the Metro Boston area.
