A Lifetime Of Art

Shared By Maplewood Resident

By Nancy K. Crevier

For eight decades, Everett Hoffman has pursued his passion for art, drawing, sculpting, painting, and creating collages that reflect the turmoil of the outer world and his own abstract view of the world around him.

On Wednesday, February 22, residents and community members had an opportunity to see dozens of Mr Hoffman’s works, displayed in the hallway outside of his residence at Maplewood at Newtown, and to hear Mr Hoffman speak briefly on his inspirations and techniques. The exhibition, on display for that afternoon only, was an extension of yet hundreds more pieces filling the walls of his apartment, where he has lived since last fall.

Nearly 2,000 more works are stored at her home in Bethel, said his great-niece Laura Mount, who is acting as curator for Mr Hoffman’s collection, since his move to Newtown from New York City.

“I was influenced to a degree by Miro and Picasso,” said Mr Hoffman in an interview prior to his talk on February 22, as well as through his reading. His first brush with art came at the age of 12, when a woman in his hometown of New Castle, Penn., opened an art school. “I enrolled. I knew even then that art was interesting to me,” he said, although he was not, he added, from an artistically inclined family. It was there that he began to master drawing techniques, working mainly in charcoal.

He majored in industrial and commercial art at the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Tech, and studied at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Later, he served as an instructor for two dimensional and industrial design at Cooper Union, nature structure at Pratt Institute, and drawing and three-dimensional drawing at the Academy of Arts in New Jersey.

Mr Hoffman served in the US Air Force during World War II, and influences of those days can be seen in some of his earlier paintings, depicting day to day undertakings of pilots and navigators, as well as places he visited as a serviceman. Working as an industrial artist, Mr Hoffman was one of the men who redesigned the FX100 interceptor aircraft — a project later scrapped, he said, due to obsolescence.

He moved on to become a magazine promoter in the public relations department at McGraw Hill, but always continued to grow as a fine artist. His works in oil, watercolor, and acrylics, as well as sculptures, have been exhibited in museums and galleries all across the United States, including a bicentennial exhibition at Lincoln Center in 1976. He is represented in private collections, as well, he said, although selling his art has never been his goal.

“I did sell a couple, but that has never been important to me,” said Mr Hoffman. What is important, is expressing himself and his world view through his art. “I like working with acrylics best,” he said. “You can start from zero and a glass of water, and do a painting. No muss, no fuss. Watercolors,” he added, “are the same.”

Along with the influences of modern artists, Mr Hoffman said that in recent years he became inspired by the ancient Greek mandalas, intricate dreamlike collages that reflect “a view of mankind,” Mr Hoffman said. His recent collages, or mandalas, are created of cut out pictures from heavily illustrated business magazines, embellished with acrylics, adhered to illustration board. Each one is no more than 2 feet by 3 feet, and many of the 521 that he has made in the past five years are covered front and back.

“Each is a clue to the run of consciousness and unconsciousness in a work of art,” Mr Hoffman said, and unlike many traditional mandalas that utilize a circular cutout to define an area, Mr Hoffman said, he prefers to let the piece sprawl across the entire canvas. “There is no circular cut out [in my mandalas],” he pointed out. “Instead, you see a mass cut out, not the one viewpoint of the circular cut out.”

A respectful follower of 20th Century analytical psychologist Carl Jung, Mr Hoffman’s collages reflect a surreal and dreamlike design structure.

“The design of a piece is what is important,” Mr Hoffman said. “There are no specific themes to each mandala. The figures [in each collage] determine design quality, and secondarily follow the mind’s thoughts,” he said. They are to some extent, he allowed, interpretations of his own dreams.

Abstract acrylic works stood out among the collages on display, with bright, primary colors bursting from the canvases. They are bold interpretations of simple objects, infused with feeling.

They are not unlike the more than 1,500 sketches he has completed in five notebooks kept since the nonagenarian moved to Maplewood six months ago. Those pen and ink sketches are abstracts of the plants, sculptures, furnishings and “all of the life” he has discovered in gardens that surround the living facility, he said. Most are black and white sketches, but several have been highlighted in colored ink.

“I think I see the absurdity and the macabre in the world around,” mused Mr Hoffman. Referring to the abstract drawings that fill the notebooks, he said, “A flower, after all, is limited in its sweetness and light. It’s ultimately doomed. I do,” he said, “have a different view of the world.”

At this stage in his life, said Ms Mount, Mr Hoffman is willing to sell some of his works, due mainly to space constraints. More of his artwork can be viewed by going to www.ECHFineArtAndDesigns.com and clicking on the Flickr link there. For more information, contact Ms Mount at 608-698-6140.