How I See The World/ Cali Hobgood

Working Artists! You are not alone! Listen to these entertaining and inspirational podcast conversations with working artists.

Cali Hobgood (https://www.photographsbycali.com/) is a traditional photographer who uses 35mm film and develops her black-and-white images in a darkroom. She finishes her work using oil paints to add color. Her imagery reflects the sensory pictures she sees in her mind's eye that depict beautiful memories from her life. These images celebrate their essential, ordinary functions yet trigger a wealth of emotional resonance from their symbolism. Cali talks about her intuitive process and recounts a story about when her work sparked controversy at an art festival that nearly threatened her safety.

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Visual artists Douglas Sigwarth (https://www.sigwarthglass.com/) and Will Armstrong (http://www.willarmstrongart.com/) co-host and discuss topics affecting working artists.

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Transcript

S4E22 How I See the World

Douglas Sigwarth: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Independent Artist Podcast, sponsored by the National Association of Independent Artists.

Will Armstrong: Also sponsored by Zapplication. I'm Will Armstrong, and I'm a mixed media artist. 

Douglas Sigwarth: I'm Douglas Sigwarth,  glassblower. Join our conversations with professional working artists. Well, hello, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast.

So glad you're here with us again this week. Will is in Austin, Texas at the Armadillo Holiday Bazaar, and so I invited somebody who I wanted to know more about. I consider Callie Hopgood a good friend, somebody I know on the road really well, and I always enjoy seeing her. But the thing that I enjoy about this podcast and why I [00:01:00] actually wanted to be involved in starting it was that we got to have the conversations about getting inside the mind of our friends and other creatives.

To find out what motivates them, what inspires them. And this conversation with Callie today, I really had a good time. I, I feel like I learned a lot about her. But I also resonated with a lot of her concepts and the things that kind of keep her going. Her positive attitude, her wanting to share her voice.

We've had a number of photographers on the podcast over the last number of years. And I believe that Callie works quite differently than, than. Any of the other photographers we've spoken with, in the sense that she uses traditional film, and she develops her images, she shoots in black and white, and then she hand paints each of her images.

One thing I'll say before we jump into this conversation, is that, The thing I really admire [00:02:00] about her and how she works is she gets a visual image that comes to her at random periods of time and then she chases that image. She finds the item that she's seeing and she plays with light, she plays with developing an exposure to get it to look exactly as she wants.

And it isn't just about the image. The image represents something deeper. A memory, a person, a conversation, something that is meaningful to her, something that can be celebrated on one hand for its mundane quality, but then also might have a deeper meaning. So, enough about that. Let's just jump right into this conversation that I had with Callie Hobgood.

Cali Hobgood: You know, one of the reasons I have hesitated to do this is, I mean, obviously, I have opinions and I'm not afraid to say them. But once I say them, you can't unsay [00:03:00] things. I have a kind of a primitive communication style. I spent a lot of time in the darkroom. I was in the darkroom today. Yeah. And it's dark.

Douglas Sigwarth: And you don't have to communicate with anybody but your medium. 

Cali Hobgood: Right, exactly. And, and hope to not run into things, you know. So anyway, my hesitancy was, you know, rooted in me, not in, not in you guys at all. Yeah. So I'm glad we're doing it now. 

Douglas Sigwarth: You know, you're saying that about, you know, Being self conscious about that.

I'm gonna jump right to one of my questions I had for further on in the conversation. Which was, with your work, you know, you don't seem to shy away from controversy in some of the uses of symbolism and imagery that the public might have an opinion upon. You've had to have a couple of uncomfortable situations with the public.

Let's just jump right in there, shall we, with, with, 

Cali Hobgood: It's true [00:04:00] that I can't seem to stop myself when an image becomes part of my visual language, and I have to make it. Obviously, there are some images that I've made that are challenging for some people. Most often, it's a case of being able to say, well, fortunately, this is none of your business.

This wasn't 

Douglas Sigwarth: for you or about 

Cali Hobgood: you 

Douglas Sigwarth: kind of thing? 

Cali Hobgood: You don't like this? Well, I do. I can make it bigger. There are always going to be people that want to, you know, slow your roll. But most people. I think about all the, the, you know, the 30 plus years that I've been doing this and those images resonate with people for the same reason the initial idea resonated with me to the point [00:05:00] that I made something.

Douglas Sigwarth: Well, can we talk about the coat hanger and how that resonated with you? 

Cali Hobgood: Sure. It came to me in my mind the same way all of my images do. It's as if I have a, like a slide projection screen in the back of my brain. It's literally A physical feeling that I'm seeing an image in my mind and it's usually some sort of trigger that makes me see it.

I can be listening to music or that's a theater or reading a book or overhearing conversation between other people. And, and I'll just. Have a visual appear in the back of my mind and if it stays with me and Grows, okay in its significance then I have to make it end with the with the hanger It wasn't [00:06:00] just the message of women's reproductive health, right and it wasn't just the history of What my mother and my grandmother and my great grandmother Lived in their lives and what they believe it was that Function is beauty, you know the hangar is not separate from the blue dress or from the shirts or from Any of the things that you might find in My closet or your closet.

It just happens to have this other visual association. It's not a metaphor by any means, you know, but now it's achieved the point of, of kind of being a visual metaphor for, uh, providing women's reproductive health, kind of taking, 

Douglas Sigwarth: taking, uh, power into your own hands. You know, when, when abortion was illegal back in the early, early days, that was a method [00:07:00] used to try and set yourself free from what you felt trapped under.

And we haven't had to think in those kinds of barbaric terms in so long until now. It was overturned. Did that image come to you before or was it after reproductive rights were overturned in the Supreme Court? 

Cali Hobgood: Before. 

Douglas Sigwarth: Mm 

Cali Hobgood: hmm. I also have an image of a pack of birth control pills. Mm 

hmm. 

Cali Hobgood: I've worked with lots of different Things like knitting needles, sanitary napkins, condoms.

Some things are harder than others to make serious work. You have to be lighthearted, allow your mind to roll with whatever you're visualizing and to make lighthearted work, you have to be able to be pretty serious. And the, the hanger thing, I saw it, I worked on it. [00:08:00] There was never a question, you know, the sound of those hangers in the closet when they bump into each other, the history of the dry cleaning world where, you know, my dad's shirts would come back from the dry cleaners, the way our lives centered around those domestic things like getting dressed every day.

Or getting pregnant and not wanting to be. It gets amazing with that image, how some people just want a really big coat hanger image for their walk in closet. 

Douglas Sigwarth: So it could be like the mundane versus the like, the deeper, you know what I mean? It's a, it sparks so many different kinds of reactions from an image.

I didn't realize that that could be. That piece had been created before Roe v. Wade was overturned. Rene and I were with you at the Des Moines Arts Festival, and we were passing you, saying, Hey, good night, how [00:09:00] was your night? And you were clearly shaken, because somebody got confrontational with you. In your booth about that image and it happened to be the anniversary of the overturning of of that decision in the Supreme Court.

Wasn't it a year later or was it the actual day? It was the actual day. That's what it was. Okay. 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah, and yeah, that's right. You were some you were really some of the first people I had, uh, talked to after, you know, I'd taken my Work face off for the day. We were leaving the show and I was so startled that that happened I knew that the decision was likely to be released that day and that was a pretty pivotal day.

That's a strangely pivotal day Over the course of many years, you know how sometimes when the moon is full weird things happen It's 

Douglas Sigwarth: a big supreme court day because the years earlier That was when marriage equality had passed. And I remember having that moment of just, like, exuberance of what we were able to [00:10:00] do.

And then to feel like years later, I remember that, thinking on that moment, thinking, Oh my God, literally, Steps forward and steps back here. What's going on? You know, with what's going on in life right now. I don't get it. 

Cali Hobgood: It's so true, and you know, as I said, usually nothing bad happens. Only great things happen.

But sometimes really, really crazy things. Can happen in the middle of a great city like Des Moines and that day Was um one of those days and it's weird Douglas I remember exactly where I was when the gay marriage decision was released it was in that little coffee shop around the corner from the library and On the edge of that show and I was with For people that that decision impacted significantly and, but, uh, you know, the other strange things about that particular [00:11:00] time of the year, do you know that that is the same day or the day before or after that Michael Jackson died?

I forgot about that. 

Mm hmm. 

Cali Hobgood: Farrah Fawcett. 

Mm hmm. 

Cali Hobgood: I know that, that seems like an innocuous thing to say. Way to mark time, um, by the things that happen on the Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday of Des Moines art festival. And when I think about all the great things that have happened to me, but this thing that happened, then there was a permitted protest that had been planned about eight blocks away from the show site because other people were anticipating.

The decision to be released and it was protesting that it had been overturned. Okay. Well, there was a counter protest as well. And at that point in the day, it was seven o'clock at night. It wasn't dark, but getting dark, big Friday night, crowds of [00:12:00] people. The main stage was lighting up and the show was hustling.

Beautiful evening, families. the people that left the Protest and the counter protesters all were heading. They came to sundered the show. Yes. Yes And and so all of a sudden, you know that foot traffic really picked up and BAM There were there were a lot of people there and and some of them weren't that happy and I had that piece right front and center And I noticed that this man Was about to get confrontational and I noticed that I didn't have anyone that I could ask to stay When I went to get help or ask anyone to go get help So did 

Douglas Sigwarth: he have words with you or some issues that he took up with you?

Cali Hobgood: Yes, and I I [00:13:00] stepped forward and then I stepped back and I left the back of my booth and I went to find an officer. I gave them the description. I went back to my booth and they were looking, then the guy came back when the police weren't with me. And I could tell that it was the thing that I didn't want to be involved in.

And he was. Threatening physical violence. I was not worried just for me, but like the 10, 000 people at the show. Wow. My friends to the left of me and to the right, and an artist and her husband across from me. 

Mm hmm. 

Cali Hobgood: Of course when someone is Intimidating you, and you're a woman, and you're alone.

Sometimes your first instinct is to get a guy to, you know, help you. Right, get some muscle, 

yeah. 

Cali Hobgood: You know, I thought about my neighbor's husband. 

Mm 

Cali Hobgood: hmm. I thought about yelling for help. [00:14:00] Like, a nanosecond decision. It wasn't like I was thinking at length. I was acting. It's instinctual. Yeah, and I didn't want to draw anyone else into it, because You know, it was my image, and I knew, and I knew that I was right.

This was a significant thing to me. What an 

Douglas Sigwarth: art show. I mean, you have a right to express your artwork, your opinions, your vision, to connect. And if somebody else can't deal with it, that's not any reason for you to shrink. 

Cali Hobgood: Right. I'm really gratified by the number of people that have made it. Collected that and it's still in its edition.

Oh, the guy came back again. So 

Douglas Sigwarth: he was looking for a fight It sounds like 

Cali Hobgood: yeah, and he was making a live Video, 

Douglas Sigwarth: that's scary. 

Cali Hobgood: It scared me because he was saying bad things To other people and said where we were 

Mm 

Cali Hobgood: hmm and to come and join him To run me [00:15:00] off the streets of Des Moines, or, you know, and that wasn't all he said, but there's no reason to, 

Douglas Sigwarth: you know.

The bad words are terrible, but the idea that this is going to turn into, like, even scarier event, like, you don't know what unpredictable stuff's going to happen here. I mean, wow. 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah, and I mean, I was scared, but I was angry. I had already, you know, We've had plenty of times on the street where people, men, get, have gotten, you know.

Yeah, let's be real here. 

Douglas Sigwarth: Who are these people? They pretty much are the same type. 

Cali Hobgood: Belligerent. I mean, I've had a lot of hilarious things happen too, you know. More hilarious than, than belligerent and scary, but. Anyway, suffice it to say the show was there for me right away. The police were there for me right away and they found the guy and [00:16:00] somebody did kind of a deep dive to see if there was actually something floating around on a social media site, including my name and where all of us were that weekend.

And he was just a kook. He was, he was one in three. I don't know. There are six billion people on the planet. 

Douglas Sigwarth: Was that probably the worst interaction you've had out on the road? I've been 

Cali Hobgood: more scared before. Really? Yeah. But I do always have an air horn. I know it's funny, but because I do so much paddling, I, yeah, I do so much paddling.

An air horn is the thing that you have in case you're at the beach and there's a problem with you or someone else. Yeah. And making big noise gets people's attention. 

Douglas Sigwarth: But have experiences like that affected what you're going to make or what you're going to say or have you stayed true to your voice? 

Cali Hobgood: Oh, absolutely.

Truer than ever. 

Douglas Sigwarth: [00:17:00] Mm. 

Cali Hobgood: Although, I'll tell you. There was a time four years ago during COVID when we were all hanging out in our own homes and doing our best to do the best that we could. Right. Get through it. Um, yeah. Have faith. Yeah. And I did make a lot of pretty rudely honest imagery about things that were going on that I didn't like.

Okay. Thank 

you. 

Cali Hobgood: And what I found was that that's not who I am. I'm such a, I'm a happy person. Yeah. I'm a pretty happy, satisfied, very lucky, privileged person. Mm-hmm . And so making work from a point of view of the Lessing table, there's a poem called the Lessing Table, and it tell us about it. It's, uh. A bleak, it's a contemporary poem.

Um, and I'm blanking on the name of the poet, but [00:18:00] it describes how over the course of this woman's marriage, the table at which she and her, Spouse share their lives get smaller and smaller and smaller, and it's called the Lessing Table. And I want my table to get bigger. I want to have a bigger table all the time.

And so the work that gratifies me and satisfies me the most, like The Hanger, recognizes and acknowledges all the work that my mother and my grandmother did. To ensure my right to have control over my own body, you know, it honors rather than Christ's foul at the state of the world. 

Douglas Sigwarth: I get you. It's not from a place of what was me.

Right. It's from a place of honoring. 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah. And badassery, you know, [00:19:00] absolutely. You know, this is hard. This, this life is. Some days it's a living, and some days it's a lifestyle. You have to wake up each morning, well, you know the lyric. Do I? With a smile on your face. Who sang it? Uh, and show the world. Oh, of course.

Yes. Hello. Thank you. I don't want a lessing table. I don't want my world to get smaller. I don't want to live in fear. I'm about to turn 62. Now don't, you don't have to, you can edit that, but, um, 60 blah, blah, blah. Yeah, no, I'm about to turn 46. 50 blah, blah, blah. Okay, 40 blah, blah, 

Douglas Sigwarth: blah. 

Cali Hobgood: My dad's. License plates was BMH 46 and it was because he said that his 46th year was his best year and he wasn't going to get any older.

[00:20:00] And so maybe I'm turning 46, but, uh, so. I'm turning 62, and it's my golden year. I mean, I tell myself this kind of thing all the time. 

Douglas Sigwarth: It's a golden year, whether or not it's a golden year, or is it actually 

Cali Hobgood: a golden year? It's going to be a golden year. I'm going to make it be the best that I can make it. I was born in 62.

I'm turning 62. I have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow. I mean, I have no idea what's going to happen in five minutes. 

Douglas Sigwarth: But you're open to receive 

Cali Hobgood: whatever. It is right. Yes So a couple years ago, not this past August but the August before out in the West in those beautiful places doing Shows. I just had a great July a great August and a great September Okay, and a great October and [00:21:00] before those things I had thought, wow, you know, all this setting up and taking down and driving thousands of miles and working in the dark room all the time and I'm 60.

It's supposed to be getting easier. Okay. Yeah. Or something. But then, uh, you know, I realized. That August, a friend of mine and her partner and I were camping, and we were at this beautiful place that was hard to get to. Like 

Douglas Sigwarth: to drive to or to walk to? Well, it was hard 

Cali Hobgood: to drive to it. Okay. You know, like a graded road, you know, and, and it was, there was no electricity and no water and no bathrooms.

And it was a trailhead in Idaho with a campground. And we'd never been there before, but we swam around the edge of this [00:22:00] streamlined, beautiful lake. Okay. And as we came around the bend of this little inlet, the view was insane! It was like nothing we'd ever seen before. The sawtooth mountains in all their glory with snow peaks and the sky and the expanse of water.

And I was like, God damn it, this is great. My friend and I looked at each other and, Wow! Oh my God, this is incredible! And right around then, I began to realize, You know, I don't want to slow down. I want to speed up. I've just begun to get good at what I do. 

Douglas Sigwarth: I've been feeling that way lately, Renee and I, with our work too.

Like, a lot of, a lot of the, the hard work that we've done over the years, It's kind of coming all together, you know, [00:23:00] and a lot of good opportunities, a lot of things are firing our way. And it's like, it feels good, doesn't it? It just kind of feels good to have that moment where, yeah, okay, am I at the point where I want to slow down?

Or is it the time I want to keep going on that momentum and build on that momentum and see where that takes it, you know, it sounds like that's what you're saying. 

Cali Hobgood: I think I'm just, I'm just beginning and for many people that are mothers, parents, uh, I shouldn't just say mothers, parents. Caregivers of their parents and family members.

Mm hmm. 

Cali Hobgood: You know, it seems like you finish school and have a life and so often that life includes taking care of other people as much as you Or more than you take care of yourself, including your, your [00:24:00] professional goals. I spent like you guys, how, how long did you spend with your kids? And, you know, I have peers who had other responsibilities that are like having children.

Um, but my older brother, Immensely talented musician that never had to take the time to you know, pack lunches and Get the kid back and forth to school and band practice and uh, you know sports and He was able to focus from the time he was very young. That's all he did and he did it so well and still does.

That he's at a different point in his career because he just was zero to sixty and I'm not talking sixty years old. Just like that and Would I [00:25:00] trade all the wonderful time I've spent being a mother, 

or being 

Cali Hobgood: a daughter, and a granddaughter, and a sister, for all the wealth and fame that others have?

Maybe.

Maybe. I don't know. Perhaps. 

Douglas Sigwarth: What kind of shoes do they have? How much money are we talking about? 

Cali Hobgood: Right, I know, yeah, yeah. I wouldn't trade all that, but I think that there was a period of time, there was just this massive explosion of things that were going on in other people's lives. Not mine. I mean just ancillary Because I was their person, you know, my son in his mid teens, uh, my mother reaching the end of her life and my, uh, younger brother, not my older brother, musician, the musician, but my younger brother had this terrible stroke.

And [00:26:00] so there was this time where I was having to deal with. Do shows to work to make money to pay for my life, but I was also, you know, phoning in health care. I've been there because I was responsible for. Yeah, yeah. And it's like there were several years there where I felt as if I didn't have time to sustain a thought.

Douglas Sigwarth: You didn't have time for images. I'm guessing to kind of stick with you. Like now it feels maybe like a luxury to have. an image come and to have it sit around your brain for a while, because you're not thinking about all those other people you have to take care of. Right. 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah. 

Douglas Sigwarth: So maybe that is part of what Is, um, fueling this, this point in your career where you feel like you can speed up because that's what is needed in order to do that.

Cali Hobgood: I think that building the resilience that comes from living [00:27:00] life, you know, uh, the, the joys and the sadness, you know, with each passing year as the world becomes bigger than Grief. Every person has these terrible heartbreaking things happen. The resilience you build during that time is what can really make your work better.

It makes my work better. That was just kind of a non sequitur thought. Well, 

Douglas Sigwarth: no, but it actually it sparked something that that's been on my mind lately with Something. So you're talking about resilience. And I've also thought similarly about thinking about adaptation. You know, I kind of think resilience and adaptation kind of go hand in hand in the sense that a lot of people know that I went through those two big surgeries where I had ankle fusions [00:28:00] and I had to really become so physically deteriorated before I could have those surgeries.

And now I'm on the other side of it and I've been doing a lot of rehabbing. And thinking a lot about my body and being very into, like, how my body functions and moves and how it adapted to these deformities, and yet I was still able to walk. And now I'm trying to walk with a new reality, a new structure, a new formation.

And I feel like that that adaptation, the body's ability to adapt, is pretty remarkable. And I also think that we adapt as artists based on our circumstances, based on working conditions, based on being out on the road and, and what's going to happen to us out there, because that's an unpredictable mass of.

Crap all the time. I don't know. Does that resonate with you the idea of adapting? 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah [00:29:00] that I like the way that sounds adaptation What is that? The novel or the film 

Douglas Sigwarth: there was a film and it was it based on a novel 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah, okay Based on the orchid thief, I believe okay. Anyway, I've always loved that word and that's brilliant You are a prime example.

I mean, it's Like what I'm talking about, you're a metaphor for building resilience and, and, and adaptation is maybe the word that I'm looking for to apply to how I'm moving forward. I mean, I don't want to be defined as the woman who had the crazy person go after her because of the hanger piece or, you know, confront me about whatever else.

Douglas Sigwarth: I mean, it's something that happened to you, but that's not who. You are, that's not the work, necessarily the work you're trying to create. Or not create. [00:30:00] It's, it's a situation, but I feel like you standing in your own power of creating the work that you want to create. And, yeah, you had that uncomfortable situation, which was scary, but you adapt.

You, you, you're resilient. You, you fought through it. Exactly. 

Will Armstrong: This episode of the Independent Artist Podcast is brought to you by Zzap, the digital application service where artists and art festivals connect. 

Douglas Sigwarth: You know, Will, I sat down last week and started looking over what shows are listed in Zzap that I want to apply to for the next season.

Will Armstrong: Oh, thanks for the panic attack. I appreciate that. I haven't even begun. No, I really appreciate what they're doing for us as an industry. You know, it's not 

Douglas Sigwarth: just about us artists. I mean, it's also about the shows. They get to jury their show using our application images and then the shows can manage all of our information using zaps online platform 

Will Armstrong: I don't know about you, but I find myself late night doom scrolling after that first rejection of the season So it's always helpful to me to have everything in one place.

Douglas Sigwarth: Yeah, [00:31:00] I guess we've gotten to this point in the talk I think we need to go back and kind of set up your work a little bit better because you're a photographer But nowadays most photographers are working Digitally and You're working with film. Do I understand that right? You are correct, sir. Tell me about that, that ancient technique of taking photographs.

Cali Hobgood: Yeah So that's how I do it. And I knew when we were talking, when we were planning on talking, that the question of How I work would come up and I'll, I'll explain it to you. And this is the way it's been forever and ever in my process. I have whatever visual for whatever reason, and I'm pressed to the point where it's, Driving force in my mind that I have to photograph What is typically a single object for whatever reason 

Douglas Sigwarth: like a studio shot, [00:32:00] right?

Would that be how it's described or defined studio shot? 

Cali Hobgood: You know, I actually don't Shoot these things in the studio. Okay. Yeah, I take the camera. I take the object or object. I set them up and I do it outside almost exclusively because I like all the big light that a good two o'clock in the afternoon, June day can give you.

And if you look at my images, there are almost always shadows. Directional light, and I bounce a lot of light to make the parts of the objects live, you know, I, I use black and white film. So let's use the green piece as an example. I don't know if you've seen that piece. It's a new 

Douglas Sigwarth: piece. Yeah, it's on here.

I'm looking at your Instagram page right here. You know, the bowl it's in, it's like grandma's cut crystal bowl. [00:33:00] Exactly. 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah. So I was thinking about this and they have a note. When I have the idea, I'll have, I'll make a sketch, I'll make a note, and I saw that in its fullness, in its absolute, exactly the way it is in the image way.

And the note that I made, I have it in front of me because I wanted to tell you, I wrote this down in my terrible handwriting, perhaps in the dark, you know, maybe in the middle of the night, I wrote this down. I didn't put a date on it. But. I wrote big cut glass bowl of green peas with a pad of butter on top and some salty sprinkles.

The glass bowl would have little feet on the bottom, hyper, hyper real green, green, green, green peas, bright green peas, yellow butter square pad. 

Douglas Sigwarth: So you visually saw it and you had to get all of those descriptive adjectives and words down so you could come back to that image. And then is it to actually make it real if it doesn't fit what you've [00:34:00] described?

It's not going to happen, right? 

Cali Hobgood: Yes. Yes. And you know, like exclamation marks all over my brain. Um, and there has to be a 

Douglas Sigwarth: shadow right here and it has to highlight over there. 

Cali Hobgood: Exactly. Yes. I've already, I've been doing this using my camera, the camera I use now. I have a lot of cameras, but the one I use exclusively for this body of work, and I have a backup because.

You know, you never know. Uh, my parents gave me in 1983 and it's a 35 millimeter Canon T70 and I use a 50 millimeter lens. I'll often use a scaffold in the case of the green peas. Okay. I didn't. I have a special table that I've built, like a white seamless. I can bounce light onto whatever is sitting on the white seamless, a bowl of peas in this instance, [00:35:00] from the back, from the front, from the left, from the right, from above, from below.

But it's all natural light because if I was using a flash or a strobe, I wouldn't be able to visualize the shadow because it's 60th of a second. So in this case, I had to find the bull. I knew I had the bull in my life somewhere. I just didn't know whether it was from my grandmother, my auntie, or the neighbor, or my mom.

You knew it existed 

Douglas Sigwarth: out there somewhere. Yes, 

Cali Hobgood: or I wouldn't have thought of it. And so the impassioned searching for a bull and then the right green peas. Oh my God. And then the butter. And then the salt. People see me tearing around town like, okay, 

Douglas Sigwarth: I need this bowl. Do you put them on little signs that you put on the trees in search of?

Cali Hobgood: I'll call my friends. I'll put a social media note out. I'll call my relatives and [00:36:00] text people. And my closest friends just know there's no reason to ask why. 

Yeah. 

Cali Hobgood: So I have an image of an umbrella. Not open a closed umbrella. When I had this idea, I let everyone know I was looking for an umbrella. And at the end of the day, I had, you know, 28 umbrellas on my porch that people had dropped by saying, well, maybe this is it.

And of course the umbrella that I was visualizing. It was hanging on a tool tag board in my parents garage and probably had been there for 30 years and I'd walked past it much of my life. But it was in that, uh, the 

Douglas Sigwarth: subconscious 

Cali Hobgood: rambling around in there. Yeah. 

Douglas Sigwarth: Yeah. 

Cali Hobgood: Uh, and you know, I have an image of a sleeping bag and this was kind of recent and I asked all my friends, I had such a strong image.

Of it. I just didn't know where, and of course the sleeping bag represented the typical family [00:37:00] camping, sleepover, childhood, cocooning, the comfort, the smell of wood smoke and the sound of a tent zipper. But also, if you look at the image, it's visualization of my version of the Ukrainian flag. Okay. Because it's blue and yellow.

And, and I didn't really realize what in my subconscious was going on. My friends brought so many sleeping bags over. I mean, I had a bedroom full of sleeping bags and none of them were right. And of course the sleeping bag that was right. Was in my basement. 

Douglas Sigwarth: Callie, I've known you for years, but you're painting a new picture of somebody I don't know that I know.

I mean, I'm thinking of you as the artist, like the, the dramatic artist saying, No, no, no, it's not right. I have to find the right sleeping bag. Is that, is that really what it is? In those 

Cali Hobgood: moments, you 

Douglas Sigwarth: know, 

Cali Hobgood: when, in that, in that moment, that pure visual, [00:38:00] you know, Time where I often have no idea why I'm impassioned to do this.

Douglas Sigwarth: So it's got to be really fulfilling to go out on this hunt and then to get the shot and to have the final piece be what you want it to be. 

Cali Hobgood: It's so gratifying. Photography is a funny beast because there are so many levels. 

Douglas Sigwarth: Everybody has a camera in their hands and they think they're a photographer. 

Cali Hobgood: You know, as I said at the beginning of our talk, I have very distinct opinions about things and once I offer them up, I can't unsay them.

So, I think it's great that, no, I think it's great that, that people, Want to create, whether it's using a cell phone to take a selfie or out on a county park trail, taking pictures of the sunset or grasses, you know, I just love that people are moved [00:39:00] to want to express themselves and so no judgment. But.

There was this time where I had this image in my mind of a roller shade like the kind you pull down That has a little spring loaded. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah a shade pole and I had a visual of My great aunt's house and her shade poles. And of course she was I go into this drapery store and they of course think I'm a nut.

I was probably wearing my pajamas, you know, having an emergency. I need a window shade pull like my great aunt had. And they were like, okay. She's like, I have it. And of course they had one, and it's a beautiful image. That's one of my favorite images I've ever made, the winter shade. 

Douglas Sigwarth: And when you find that [00:40:00] item in the store or the whatever, and you have that reaction of, Oh my God!

So they look at you like this woman is just off the charts. Be a case. Yeah. That's so cool. I love it. 

Cali Hobgood: Well, you know, you got to beast it on up and be yourself and do the thing that you want to do. And if you don't. Then it's your own loss, right? If you're not expressing 

that. 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah. Yeah. So traditional photography is what I do.

It's what I've always done. And the process of using the camera that my parents gave me in 1983, it's just a coincidence that that is my way of expressing these inevitable visuals that are a product of my life. Everything is a story of almost exclusively. Something beautiful to me. Like, you know, the life preserver image is [00:41:00] a metaphor, of course, for everyone loves a good day at the lake, but it's also for those days when you need someone to throw you a life preserver, right?

I have such 

Cali Hobgood: strong sensory memories from my childhood of, you know, That's the way that Coppertone smells. You know, the smell of water. Water is my, water's my thing. But all of my images have something of that. Strangely enough, I don't even like me. Well, what I'm picking 

Douglas Sigwarth: up from you is the sensory of of connections from relationships past family Experiences whatever so I mean it I guess it wouldn't have to necessarily be that you like to ingest them It could be the memory of someone in your life who presented them.

Well, is that 

Cali Hobgood: I think that the things that when we're younger, we find the most [00:42:00] scary or unfamiliar, like uncomfortable family reunion dinners where you are A teenager and you and your cousins just want to leave the table and let the adults talk and you have to sit there and eat green peas and make nice conversation with, um, you know, people you might see once.

Douglas Sigwarth: Every five or six years. It's interesting that green Peas would bring up that specific situation 

Cali Hobgood: now, you know? Yeah. I so wish that I could have those moments back. Wouldn't that be great to, to do differently able or what to ask Uncle Ben. Mm-hmm . Or, uh, aunt Newell about, you know, what was that really like for you?

What are your memories of your dad? Or just spend one more hour with my grandmother. [00:43:00] So the, like the, the representation of my love of those moments and maybe a bittersweet sadness that I do. Didn't recognize them for the wonderful opportunities they were at the time, you know, it's like that, uh, Harry Chapin, that T for the Tillerman song.

T for the Tillerman? No, I don't know it. This, it's a story song where, The father is always too busy for the son and then the son of 

Douglas Sigwarth: the 

Cali Hobgood: cats in the cradle for the yes. Yes. Oh my god Yes. Yeah, my dad always says 

Douglas Sigwarth: fucking song when he 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah, isn't that isn't that life and isn't it funny how we see that in our own lives now as parents Yeah.

Okay. 

Douglas Sigwarth: But, you know, actually I've, uh, not [00:44:00] to take away from what you were going to say, but we've had these great conversations with our 20 something year olds just the past, you know, number of years. It's so cool seeing them become adults and hearing my daughter, you know, talk about memories in the past and almost like feeling like, Oh my God, I was thinking, Maybe she had a different opinion of that, but she sounds like good.

She sounds happy. She's, you know what I mean? And it's like, oh my god, we can be okay. We can, we can exhale. We don't have to feel bad about everything we did wrong as parents, that we did a few good things. So that's awesome. 

Cali Hobgood: I agree completely. I There's just no greater joy than watching that apple fall not far from the tree, you know.

However, There are also times where I think, how did my parents deal with us? You sound like a creative bunch. We are. Yeah. My dad was in theater. Okay. [00:45:00] And he and my mother met doing summer stock where she was the dance captain. Okay. Anyway, so theater, dance, and then Lawrence, my older brother, the jazz pianist, and Me it was just it was a great life a great way to grow up.

What was your role in the family? Well, I was the middle. I was the only girl. Okay, and I met with great approval all the time. I had oh, yeah Yeah, 

Douglas Sigwarth: because you like tried really hard or because they just you were like the apple of their eye Well, I do have my charm. Yeah, well you do It is known 

Cali Hobgood: So, I think I was pretty I was sweet and My real name is not Callie.

My real name is Kathleen. Kathleen Stewart Hopkidt. Okay. And my nickname when I was a girl was Kitty. 

Oh. I am. Meow. Um. [00:46:00] 

Douglas Sigwarth: You're going to have hundreds of artists referring to you as Kitty just to give you a hard time from here on out. That would be 

Cali Hobgood: Miss Kitty. Right? Okay. Um, I used to, I felt very uncomfortable about it.

We moved from a large city to the Midwest. When I was 12 and I couldn't be Kitty in my mind and I chose the name Callie and made my family call me Callie. You had to keep correcting 

Douglas Sigwarth: them when they would call you Kitty? It took a while. It took a while, yeah? 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah. And it's interesting because I could just as easily be Kathleen or Callie.

Uh, you know a rose by any other name is just as sweet 

Douglas Sigwarth: Or Or 

Cali Hobgood: not 

Douglas Sigwarth: but but when you didn't want to be kitty anymore did uh, kathleen feel too formal 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah, i've never been a fan of nicknames And you know when you're kathleen you are kathy and I have so many cousins that are kathy Or kate [00:47:00] I don't know. I was just talking to my son about this a couple days ago I have never been able to just Forging ahead and being whatever I feel like being at any given moment.

And that was one of those moments. And it's kind of funny because I have to be Kathleen with my passport, my driver's license, all of that stuff. And 

Douglas Sigwarth: so documented formal. Yeah. 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah. Every now and then. Someone like at the doctor's office will be saying Kathleen Kathleen and I'll just be sitting here like right.

You're just where is that Kathleen bitch? 

Douglas Sigwarth: What 

Cali Hobgood: I wonder why 

Douglas Sigwarth: that Kathleen didn't show up for Christ

Cali Hobgood: Any time to sit down but anyway back to my process. Mm hmm. I know you're leading this So when I, I take the, uh, photograph with the camera, I developed the film, [00:48:00] I overexposed the film, black and white film. That's pretty fast for me. But then again, I was. learning about this in the 80s. So I used a 400 film and set it at 200, my ISO, which is ostensibly overexposing by one stop already right there.

So you get a more contrasty negative. 

Douglas Sigwarth: It's good when you use layman's terms because us glassblowers know nothing about what you're talking about. So 

Cali Hobgood: then, then when I'm, when I'm metering off of, My subject I continue to overexpose by At least one or two steps. So I end up having a really dense negative A lot of really dense negatives.

So you hold it up and the grade the gradient is pretty much black or white. There's not a lot of in between in my highly overexposed [00:49:00] film. And then I print in a traditional black and white, wet silver process, dark room. I use an enlarger. that allows me to expose over a great distance from the ceiling and the paper can be on the ground.

Okay. And so I can make really huge images from tiny little negatives. A 35 millimeter negative isn't very large. Yeah. And that's not the way I always do it, but I love the big images the most. 

Yeah. 

Cali Hobgood: The grain. That's what you call the 

Douglas Sigwarth: tiny little, like in digital realms, it would be DPI kind of thing, or 

Cali Hobgood: in the, in a digital, in digital world, it would be pixels.

Yeah. And of course it did. One of the main differences between traditional black and white film and darkroom photography and digital [00:50:00] photography is that Grain is round and pixels are square. I mean, this could have changed because I really don't know very much about digital at all, but I know that much.

Yeah. 

Cali Hobgood: So my eyes are round. 

Yeah. 

Cali Hobgood: My lens is round. The world is round and grain is round. So it all goes together for me. 

Yeah. 

Cali Hobgood: So when I take my glasses off, I'm very nearsighted. Everything looks kind of grainy and contrasty like my images. It's like I'm, I've found a way to reproduce how I see the world.

And I, I, I so often wish, I mean, unfortunately, I suppose the only option for what I like to imagine could be like, I wish I could capture things really the way I see them, you know, when I'm, [00:51:00] Laying in bed and, uh, looking at my absolutely adorable dog sitting beside me. I wish I could take a picture of that and have that, not for my work, but 

Douglas Sigwarth: Yeah, but to have that image be what your eyes see forever.

Yeah. 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah. Yes. 

Douglas Sigwarth: Mm hmm. 

Cali Hobgood: So when I have the green peas Set up on the white seamless is being illuminated by the sun. I'm trying to make the image that I see on the inside of my mind and through my eyes. look exactly like what I print in the darkroom. When what I see in my mind, my mind's eye, and in the real, that's when I know it's good.

That is the beginning of being able to be an artist in my world, in what I do. 

Yeah. 

Cali Hobgood: Then I print, [00:52:00] I print on Ilford black and white, multi grade resin coated paper. Now for photographers, they, for film photographers that work in the director, they would know what I mean. I used magenta filtration while I'm printing with my enlarger.

I have a color head enlarger that has a magenta filter that I can increase, which. increases the contrast of my black and white images even more. Use Ilford photochemistry as well. I have big 10 foot darkroom sinks and a tiny little 10 watt bulb in my safe light. So I have some illumination. Okay. Most people have been in a dark room or I'd like to imagine 

Douglas Sigwarth: I haven't been in a dark room, but you, you see like in TV shows or movies or whatever.

And it seems like this, this kind of magical place. 

Cali Hobgood: It is magical. I will tell you it's [00:53:00] always wrong. Is it TV and how they present it? You know, I can't read fiction about photography because that's all it is, but yeah, no, no dark room is that bright and no one is reaching into, uh, A spray of fix with their bare hands and then holding it up and looking at it, you know, yeah, it's like, no, that's, I mean, that's pretty nasty.

Put on some gloves, bitch. Right. So, um, COVID was pretty easy for me because a lot of the same practice of safety. And remaining separate from your environment with masks, gloves, face shield, face protection. You were set up for that, huh? I already had all that and you know, I had that. I had made, uh, an image of a surgical mask before COVID.

Oh my [00:54:00] gosh. Right before 

Douglas Sigwarth: COVID. Okay, Kelly, we need to talk now. You see images in your mind. You're doing all this stuff before it actually happens. Uh, are you pre cognitive, uh, psychic? What's going on here? 

Cali Hobgood: It is kind of funny. I mean, I do freak myself out sometimes. But, um, that, that was a weird coincidence.

I'm an observer. I'm a visual. person as all of us are, but I'm a real observer. I look at things and I look for the synchronicity. Do 

Douglas Sigwarth: you think the stage background or the theater background in your life that that plays into how you present your work? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I kind of pick up on that a little bit.

Cali Hobgood: Yeah. Watching my father be a director for his, Career. And that I spent a lot of time sitting in the theater after school, or just because I wanted [00:55:00] to and watching blocking and rehearsal was great. Fodder for me. Of course, most of that stuff. Went on not in an actual black box, you know most of rehearsals and everything that go into a production like that happen where you're imagining the proscenium you're imagining where the edge of the stage is you're imagining there's an audience or there's light or sound effects and costumes and it's like, you know the way your mind imagines It's Uh, scenario when you're reading a novel, 

and 

Cali Hobgood: I read all the time.

So it's that, that kind of, yes, this is a stage stage left. We have this, it feels definitely 

Douglas Sigwarth: like there's a composition of that. One thing we learned in theater aesthetics was how. To direct [00:56:00] the eye and focal point and all that. And I, and I feel like I pick up on that with how your work is presented. 

Cali Hobgood: Most definitely.

I think the set designers and the kind of productions that I witnessed come to life. Like my, My preference for strong visuals, stark, not a stringent, but clean, clean, clean, clean, just a, like I distill an image to the point where there's not much there, not a lot of ancillary information, always surrounded by white to isolate.

From the very beginning, and I started doing photography when I was really young, 14, back when public schools had a lot of great programs for art and music and, um, [00:57:00] a different kind of world. And typically the girls took home ec and the guys took shop. And we had this home ec teacher that just drove me absolutely nuts.

Okay. This little lady that had Really tightly wound, you know, she was so type a she was triple a and I already knew how to sew and how to cook things and I was just over this and I went to I asked my principal and said, Oh, I'm over this. Just give me my A. Can I take shop maybe? I was, I probably was sent to the principal instead of going voluntarily.

But he said, you know, I've got an idea. And he, and I went to, to the industrial arts class and I was like the only girl. And we did. Electricity and some wood [00:58:00] shop and then hit industrial drawing. 

Douglas Sigwarth: I 

Cali Hobgood: was not into that. I did not dig that. Okay. You know, using 

Douglas Sigwarth: tools. Protractors the right words. 

Cali Hobgood: I'm becoming a problem child and in shop class, just like I was in home ec and, and the teacher, Tony Ash, Great man.

Okay. He said kelly. He was bahamian. Okay. He said kelly I have got just the thing and He gave me two Canon cameras all the film, you know big roll film He rolled your own film and run of the dark room gave me a, you know, like a crash course on how to do things and just said, now get out of here. Stop bothering all of us.

We know you don't like industrial drag. So that's how it all started. 

Douglas Sigwarth: That was 

Cali Hobgood: the beginning. And my dad had always [00:59:00] taken a lot of photographs, partly. Because of the theater and partly because he was a dad and we traveled all around the world and you know slideshows that was our vibe so it was just good that that feeling the smell of film the feeling of advancing the film and the vibration when you depress the shutter and 

Douglas Sigwarth: you are so sensory aren't you 

Cali Hobgood: i am i and and The sound of the trickling water in the dark room and my timer, a lot of my exposures are really long and just that, the hush.

It's like, I know this is soppy, 

Douglas Sigwarth: but 

Cali Hobgood: the first time I went to the Redwoods as an adult, I walked in through [01:00:00] this big path to near woods and the hush of those huge trees that end the Redwood sequoias, whatever they are the great distance between the the pine needles the the fir tree needles on the ground and and the canopy of the trees that hush that that Environment that's so unique that reminds me Of my darkroom.

Wow. It's a completely private place. My family and friends. Yeah. No better than to even think about opening that door or interrupting me. 

Douglas Sigwarth: Right. The work is 

Cali Hobgood: ruined then, 

Douglas Sigwarth: right? 

Cali Hobgood: Exactly. And you know, with mural paper, I get huge rolls of 43 and a half inch wide, hundred foot long paper that cost a lot of money.

I have to cut that [01:01:00] paper. And process it after exposing it with the enlarger in open bath trays, and so that can be, you know, an hour, an hour and a half of absolute dark, and if someone opens the door, Well, well, they 

Douglas Sigwarth: hear you hear you curse. 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah, I did. So I had this cleaning lady one time who opened the door and it's funny because your name was Rosario.

It's like Megan Mullally on Will and Grace. Yes! 

Douglas Sigwarth: Yeah! Anyway. So I wanted to ask you, I, I was surprised, I had, I did not realize that you shoot on black and white film until just recently, and that you're, you're hand painting each of your images. So that's where the color comes in. 

Cali Hobgood: Yes, it's true. So when I was in college.

I had a professor, Barbara [01:02:00] Genevieve, and she was a very pivotal figure in the post feminist world of photography. And she was the brutalist. I would never want to be in her mind. I learned what I did not want to be as a person, as an artist, as a photographer from her. But man, she was like a train wreck. I was fascinated by her.

What not to do? Yes. And how not to be. But she made these huge images. Using the same mural printing technique that I use, and she hand colored them, because at the time, in the early 80s, color processors were not a thing, and printing really large color work didn't matter if it was C41, if it, there are a lot of different photo processes, um, color photography, illustration, as you'd think.

requires the chemistry be, or it did then, the developer [01:03:00] had to be 102 degrees. And so if you imagine, what is a liquid like at 102 degrees? Well, at first it's incredibly toxic. It's a hard process to do. And really unhealthy. So Barbara pragmatist was like, okay, I'm going to use oils on top of my huge black and white images to replace the really hard task of printing huge 

Douglas Sigwarth: Color images all the way back then and that's that stayed with you.

That's been your yeah your technique through for all these years 

Cali Hobgood: Mm hmm. Well when I was growing up my grandmother who lived with us half of the year, okay after she retired And with my uncle the other half of the year had a lot of family portraits and pictures that were hand colored Yeah, and not of images like mine right of people of oh, i've 

Douglas Sigwarth: got lots of family [01:04:00] members too Same same deal.

They were colorized. I can't remember like my parents for example, they're high school graduation photos. We've got the eight by tens of those and they were hand colored. 

Cali Hobgood: I mean, it was a normalized way of doing things to me from the time I was a little, you know, tall enough to see the images on the walls.

That was where it began. 

Douglas Sigwarth: Do you think that technique adds a little bit of nostalgia to the work too? The way you add color to your work? I mean, aside from the whole setup? 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah, for me, it was just. I did a lot of large format color work, like, not large, a 4x5 color work, a lot of very theatrical, I mean, I'll show you.

Yeah, please. Sometime. Yeah, 

please. 

Cali Hobgood: And I hesitate, because a lot of it was self portraiture, I hesitate to put anything. Out on social media because that got a life of its own totally but I was always very dramatic You know, my [01:05:00] dad would have preferred I think for me to go into theater I always had that hobgood shit eating grin.

However I 

Douglas Sigwarth: think I have one of those shit eating cramps. 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah, it's impossible to escape it. I mean, like, there's some imp in me and I can't make it go away. Okay. So, I would, much like my process now, I would get this idea, like, oh, I'm gonna build out the, photo studio at the university at the art and design building.

I'm going to build a cave and then I'm going to be, you know, some mythological figure or, um, you know, I did a whole series of the elements. Okay. Be wind, be water. I was just, those were good times. I mean, it was the eighties, so you could do whatever the hell you wanted. Anyway, those were really [01:06:00] hard to print.

Douglas Sigwarth: Okay. 

Cali Hobgood: If I wanted to make them as big as, like, if I wanted my head to be as big as my head, I learned the same thing that Barbara de Genevieve had learned, and that is, it's really hard to do that, and I didn't have enough money to have someone else do it in a professional lab. And so I started using oils.

Douglas Sigwarth: Isn't that how we just figure stuff out when we don't have the money to do what other people send out to have done? 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah. Yeah. So Roseanne Cash did this Library of Congress. I'm getting the name right, you know, Will would fact check me on this. Okay. Um, Roseanne Cash did this, uh, Library of Congress set of talking, what do you, interviews.

Like what we're doing 

Douglas Sigwarth: now. 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah, yeah, stop. Where she was talking about the history of, of country music, right? Or the history of music, not just country music. Okay. I was listening to Terry Gross talking to her or someone about this, maybe not her. And the phrase, [01:07:00] Style is the result of our limitations. Has always stuck with me because that is so much the case with my work and so many people's work, you know Rembrandt charged extra for hands because they're hard, right?

You want your feet in there? And 

Douglas Sigwarth: AI will just throw in another finger, so They can't get hands wide either. 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah You don't have to be Maxfield Parrish to figure that out Um That's always my response to AI, people that are using AI and regenerative photo processes. I look back at Maxfield Parish or Thomas Hart Benton, and I'm sorry that my education, my art history education happened at a time where I wasn't really turned on to a lot of really intense, Women artists at at the time.

Okay, but that's a story for another day. Mm [01:08:00] hmm. Don't get me started on that 

Douglas Sigwarth: Okay, because you'd make me edit it all out and people would hear it and they can't unhear it now anyway

Cali Hobgood: So if you look like you look at Maxfield Parish and and that kind of Insanely intense, vibrant, uh, crazy. Not as crazy as like Hieronymus Bosch stuff. I just want to tell people, you know, build some skills, practice 10, 000 hours, do it yourself, plus. Maxfield Parish was hot, super hot, smoking hot. And I think Thomas Hart Benton was too.

And that's my thing on AI right now. But back to the hand coloring. 

Douglas Sigwarth: Okay. Yeah. 

Cali Hobgood: I use oils. I use a lot of Q tips. and cotton balls. Is that for texturing? Because my paper, Ilford black and white, [01:09:00] variable contrast, red coated, pearl surface paper, doesn't have tooth. If I used a brush, kind of brushes on and then you brush it off 

right 

Cali Hobgood: away.

And so when I take oil, Like imagine a Q tip, but it's not exactly a Q tip. It's, but it's a reference that people understand. And I'll take a lot of oil, since we're talking about the green peas, let's stick with that. I'll put it on the photograph to the point that it's opaque and you can't see the photograph underneath it.

But then I'll work that oil. To create a gradient of opacity through padding it with cotton balls or picking up bits of it with tiny little bits of cotton until I get it the way I want it to be. And so like if you look at your forearm, it doesn't just have [01:10:00] one color. It's not, it's a million. Who is it that said a million points of light?

Is that? Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, somebody like that. Yeah, right. A million points of light. Yeah, right. 

Douglas Sigwarth: I'm thinking of you too, but that's the city of blinding lights. 

Cali Hobgood: I think it's all coming from the same place, right? So if you look at any object, except for a flat piece of white paper, there's a lot of, there's so much tonality, so many different variables and reflective Things.

And of course, photography is all about light to make a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional object, which is basically what I do to make it alive, to give it that three dimensionality that I believe I achieve in a lot of my images is a series of compromises of highlight and color. I can [01:11:00] look at one green pea or one section of the life preserver, or Whatever and see it as its own entity, but I have to see Step back like the impressionists and quantalism, you know, step back to see the whole thing to see how it all works together to form the concept, the, uh, the expression of a bowl of green peas, as opposed to the literal green peas.

So all of my work is really clean. I clean up the edges of the oil paint. I use a dry mount press. My husband. is a museum guy. So I have a lot of rules for how to handle and how to present artwork that come from the museum world. I see the principles of, of that. But like, I think You need to do things a certain way the museum [01:12:00] standard way even if we're out on the street Yes, yeah.

Yeah, but you know principles are like prayers Noble, but awkward at a party So 

Douglas Sigwarth: I wanted to ask you about that so you you said something a little back where you were saying capturing a Two dimensional image of a three dimensional thing. And that's something I struggle with all the time, with trying to capture our work, digitally, whatever, just for stupid stuff like Instagram, marketing for websites, jurying into shows.

It's, it's like the bane of my existence. It'll be like, it doesn't look like what I'm seeing. The magic is gone because it's gone flat. Is it all about the light? Like you were saying earlier, is it about the light that makes it three dimensional? 

Cali Hobgood: I think it's about the way I [01:13:00] see the light, you know, if you look at an oil painting that includes It's a lot of highlighting to make something come alive.

It's the same technique. I don't use white paint to create that negative space that causes something to pop. It's a feeling. It's just, it's the heartbeat of the knowing. That's a really vague way of putting it, but 

Douglas Sigwarth: No, but I like it. I like, Eve, I like that esoteric kind of statement. It's the heartbeat of the knowing.

Cali Hobgood: There are hard things to describe. Pornography. You know it when you see it. Like what, right? 

Douglas Sigwarth: Not your work. 

Cali Hobgood: No, not yet. Or you don't know that. She's just 

Douglas Sigwarth: getting started, people. 

Cali Hobgood: There are all kinds of You remember when I was in school, the studying subliminal seduction was [01:14:00] part of what they expected you to be able to at least talk about in the workforce if you left.

School to work as a as a photographer in in the print world, you know 

Yeah, 

Cali Hobgood: remember the Smirnoff vodka ad where the urban myth was that? There were naked people in the ice cubes Remember that yes subliminal seduction. Yeah, 

Douglas Sigwarth: I remember the Farrah Fawcett hair thing where they were remember that what I'm talking about Well, I remember the poster, but there was supposedly something.

I mean, this is getting weird, but In the waves of her hair, there was supposed to be subliminal imagery that came out that came through. Well 

Cali Hobgood: after we get off the phone This I'm going to go check my Farrah Fawcett poster to see what's in her hair. [01:15:00] I Mean she's right by Mark Spitz In his little speedo.

Right? No, I'm kidding. Maybe. Ritz crackers supposedly in their ad images had sex spelled Well, that's what I thought it 

Douglas Sigwarth: was with her hair. So, honestly, I wasn't sure of that. But when you just said that about Ritz, I'm 

Cali Hobgood: like, that's what I remembered. 

Douglas Sigwarth: So cool. 

Cali Hobgood: Interesting. I think with what you just asked, that Two dimensional representation of a three dimensional object.

Yeah. Color gets all the credit value, does all the work. And by value I mean the gradient scale of black to white. Mm-hmm . The contrast. 

Mm-hmm . 

Cali Hobgood: I have a book that's my addition number book and my dark room notes books. Mm-hmm . So I work in additions from five images. [01:16:00] to 200 images. It just depends. So people wonder, we were talking about the hanger, how can I always have a hanger?

Well, I haven't printed the entire edition of the hanger. And in photography, in the traditional, School, the principles of photography. If you make an image in an edition and you decide I'm going to make 50 of these and you sign them and you number them one of 50, two of 50, three of 50. Et cetera. When you finish the 50, you make the 51st.

And the 51st is the same. I mean, I'm describing this in an ad hoc way. Okay. Uh, it's the same as the first 50, but the school of thought, the school in which I was raised. Uh, meant that you would take a [01:17:00] sharp instrument and X through the emulsion side of your negative and print it as the proof that you have finished the edition.

I take all of that really seriously. Everybody should work the way that they work. I work in the constructs of how I was taught. So 

Douglas Sigwarth: you could say it's an other way of working isn't for you, but it's not saying it isn't for another artist. 

Cali Hobgood: Most people don't know when they're buying art at an art show, at a gallery, they want what they love.

My biggest job as an artist is to give people permission to buy what they love. You know, it is okay. You are right. This is really cool. You should get this. Yeah. Um, and. So part of my gestalt is just that I am very self limiting. I add the presentation element that I've learned from being married since 1989 to a museum man.

[01:18:00] And that's like a working behind the scenes. Museum Job like prepared or an exhibits designer not a curator. Yeah We're definitely it's amazing how much i've learned from him because that physical skill of being able to build things Cut mat. Mm-hmm . Dry mount. Mm-hmm . Or just make the tools you need to make tools like in the dark room you're always having, I Jerry rig things all the time.

Mm-hmm . And I never used to know how to do things like that the way I was raised other people. did those things. Mm-hmm . And I mean, the closest. Thing in my house we had to a screwdriver was a corkscrew for sure and good for every use right So now now I know how to do things and I take joy in the execution of doing them I mean I take so much joy [01:19:00] in Doing a good slide for zap.

I take joy in a good packing job in my van 

Douglas Sigwarth: I noticed that about you like even when people are getting so stressed out at setting up a show leaving a show You seem unflappable. You seem like it'll get done when it gets done. You know, it does not seem like a race 

Cali Hobgood: So far it always has I mean there are times where we all think golly it's getting dark I'm tired What if I just left all of this here?

Walk away Yeah, well over all these years Even remember before 

GPS, 

Cali Hobgood: where you have the printed out direction map quest, I never didn't get to a show. I always managed to find my hotel. I always have managed to get home. There has [01:20:00] yet to be a time. When I have been completely unprepared, now this is all knock wood stuff, right?

And have not managed to put the jigsaw puzzle back together at the end of a long show in my van. 

Right. 

Cali Hobgood: You know, there are some trials. Yeah, for sure. Certainly, those late nights where you're like, oh, oh, but I'll plug in my headphones. Thanks. Thanks. Let's not overstate this because watch I'll I remember at coconut grove Packing up a coconut grove this past year Dang 61 is hard.

I'm taking a lot longer I've actually made a lot of effort to to To make sure that I only get stronger instead of the opposite, because you've been talking about that as well, 

Douglas Sigwarth: even though the years tick [01:21:00] on, you know, we do age and it is hard, we could find ways to do it a little kinder to ourselves, make choices.

I mean, you know, 

Cali Hobgood: most of my closest friends travel as a unit, two people, and I'm inherently solo. Very rarely have anyone with me because I like to, all of my art and all of my, Comfort stuff and all the clothes that I might want to have and I find that if I take someone with me there is inevitably going to be an outfit or a pair of shoes or a Bottle of wine that I can't fit in the van.

So 

Douglas Sigwarth: then a negotiation has That 

Cali Hobgood: is that they don't go, and my wine does, right? They 

Douglas Sigwarth: stay, wine goes. 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah, so, so, interacting during set up and break down and during the [01:22:00] show is so much easier for me when I'm by myself. Because no one else makes the work. With you two, You know, it's, you're a unit. 

Douglas Sigwarth: But we're two very different mentalities.

And Renee does such a good job of reminding me that I don't need to make every stress into a crisis. She's a lot like you, where the quality of life, our quality of life, is setting up the art show just as much as it is making the artwork. Packing the art van is the same thing as finishing and doing stuff in our cold studio.

You know, it's all integrated. And do we want to spend any of our life miserable and I don't necessarily intend that to happen, but I need reminders from time to time. 

Cali Hobgood: I'm, I'm with you. I do as well. I'll get home. I remember in 2019 getting home from Plaza and I had a really busy year and I still had a lot of time.

I still [01:23:00] do have a lot of family responsibilities. My brother, my younger brother, I have him in a care facility close to where I live. And he's paralyzed on his left side, but he's a miracle. I mean, nobody thought, That he would live this long and that he would have this quality of life. And so, you know, shout out to him.

He, he works hard all the time, you know? Yes. And he called and he's like, hey, I broke another, I broke. Yeah. I broke another cell phone charger. Do you have what any, and you know, it's not a big thing. You just have to go to the store and get, Whatever, or you have to make time to make someone else feel comfortable and have dignity and, um, Like, am I going to worry over the fact that I spent an [01:24:00] hour less in the dark room today because I took the time to go find, hopefully, a new iPhone charger that Brent cannot break and take it to him and show him how to use it?

What I take from that 

Douglas Sigwarth: is coming back to your Ps. You know, your story about the peas at the table and wishing maybe you could go back in time and have sat down and talked to that one uncle that you mentioned instead of rushing out of the table. It sounds to me like you've got it in perspective now that these moments with the people you care about and you love, you don't want to take those for granted.

So it's kind of like how you see the world. You, you talk about your artwork is how you see the world. And it really feels to me, you know, at the end of this talk here. That your art life and your family life and your living life are so integrated. 

Cali Hobgood: Yeah, my work defines me and, and my life defines my work.

Certainly. Chicken and egg. 

Douglas Sigwarth: I 

Cali Hobgood: [01:25:00] think that's the case for all of us. We're all working out creatively. The same question, the same set of mysterious math equation. That's why we're doing this. Time and time again. I see us working even in all these different mediums. So differently, we all have a similar goal.

Um, I love our lives. We're lucky 

Douglas Sigwarth: people. And I love this conversation. It's really given me a renewed inspiration and I've known you so well, and now I know you even better, and I hope the listeners enjoyed this talk, too, because I, I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much, Callie. 

Cali Hobgood: Thank you, Douglas. I want you to have a great, uh, rest of the year, and I will see you in 2025.

That's right. 

Douglas Sigwarth: We will do that. Every art show artist, when they say goodbye, they say, where will I see you next? But I won't keep this podcast episode going any longer with us discussing our schedules. [01:26:00] 

Cali Hobgood: Right. Yeah. I'll see 

Douglas Sigwarth: you in 2025. 

Cali Hobgood: Sounds good. 

Douglas Sigwarth: Take care. Bye bye. 

Cali Hobgood: Bye. 

Douglas Sigwarth: Well, I'm telling you, that was a very meaningful talk to me, and I hope you guys resonated with some of the information as well.

Thanks again for listening. This podcast is so much fun for us. And whether you are off the road for a while and you get to just settle into the holidays and enjoy regular life again, or if it's a creative period where you're just turning out the work in anticipation for next year, Or if you're actually still showing up at the shows all through this winter season and just keeping the ball rolling wherever you're at.

We appreciate you tuning in and we'll catch you next time. Everyone. Bye bye. 

Will Armstrong: This podcast is brought to you by the National Association of Independent Artists. The website is 

Douglas Sigwarth: NAIAartists. org. Also sponsored by Zapplication, that's [01:27:00] Zapplication. org. And while you're at it, find us on social media and 

Will Armstrong: engage in these conversations.

Oh, 

Douglas Sigwarth: and if you like the show, we'd love it if you would give us your five star rating and offer up your most creative review on your podcast streaming service. See you next time.