Colette Hosmer Fish Heads 2008 Gray granite, polished 78 x 36 x 24 inches Location: Santa Fe’s historic rail yard district (Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA)

Art Interview: Colette, when and where were you born?

Colette Hosmer: I was born in 1946 in North Dakota in a very small town named Dunseith. At that time the population was about 800.

Art Interview: What was it like for you growing up in such a small town?

Colette Hosmer: It was great because I had the run of the place. Everyone knew who I was and I felt completely safe there. I spent a lot of days running loose by myself, catching minnows and frogs in a creek that ran through a little park at the edge of town. I was always interested in nature, so it was a very good place for me to grow up.

Art Interview: What did your parents do for a living?

Colette Hosmer: My mother was a French-Canadian immigrant who was raised on a farm. She was a homemaker. My father owned a small grocery store in town, as did his father before him.

Colette Hosmer Canned Duck 2008 Cast aluminum 11 x 5 inches multiples / Edition of 3 Solo exhibition: The Hungry Ghost - William Siegal Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Art Interview: You attended the University of North Dakota when you were older. What did you study there?

Colette Hosmer: I attended the university for just one year. I signed up for the required freshman courses and some basic art classes. I found that I was completely unprepared for university life. I knew nothing about what the other students my age had been exposed to. I had no idea who the artists were that they were talking about in the elementary art history class. I honestly felt overwhelmed.

What I excelled at was a biology course. I remember that we were required to dissect fetal pigs and frogs, and I lived for that lab class. I was naturally good at biology and I remember truly loving it.

After the divorce, my children and I moved to Albany, Oregon to be closer to an older sister. She suggested that I enroll in art classes at a nearby humanities college and that suggestion was instrumental in changing the direction of the rest of my life. Over the three years that I attended the Linn-Benton Community College I spent every spare minute there. I took the same sculpture class over and over again. I didn’t care about credits; I just wanted access to the facilities and the teachers. Gene Tobey, the sculpture professor, became an important mentor.

Art Interview: Did you realize then that you wanted to become a professional artist?

Colette Hosmer: No, in fact I never intended to become an artist; I guess I didn’t think that I could. I really didn’t know what it meant to be a professional artist or how to go about doing it. I was just following a passion. Because I wasn’t attempting to participate in the art world I had a certain freedom. I wasn’t worried about what was expected of an artist and because of this I was able to go in a direction that was truly my own.

Colette Hosmer Pig Teats 2006 Cast porcelain (50) 2 x 16.5 x 3.25 inches Solo exhibition: Feast - Chinese European Art Center - Xiamen, China

Colette Hosmer: I had made several sculptures at school and was given a solo show at the Albany library by some of my sister’s friends. That was my introduction to art exhibition.

Art Interview: Your first exhibition in a commercial gallery was during 1985 at Shidoni Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. How did you end up in New Mexico?

Colette Hosmer: After three years in Oregon, I began to feel restless and didn’t quite know why. I thought I should probably seek further education or change my environment or both. It was a strange way to think at that time because I needed to support my two young children and I had become established as a freelance illustrator in Albany. And even though I had a solid network of friends and supporters there I decided it was time to make a change.

Earlier in my life I had driven through Santa Fe, New Mexico and it seemed like a romantic place because of its history and western location at the base of the Rocky Mountains. I was about 33 then and I honestly didn’t know Santa Fe had a thriving art community. Shortly after I arrived I found a job working at a museum gift shop. It wasn’t very long before I heard some people talking in a restaurant about Shidoni Foundry, so I drove out there that afternoon and fell in love with the place. Shidoni is a bronze foundry, and in addition to an indoor art gallery, monumental sculptures are displayed over eight acres of open land. Before long, I became friends with some of the people working in the foundry and I pestered the owner, Tommy Hicks, until finally hired me ten months later.

Colette Hosmer Rhythm 2003 Stainless steel, painted 108 x 264 inches Location: Permanent Collection of the city of Xiamen, China

Colette Hosmer: Working at Shidoni was the second phase of my “street” education. Everyday, I was surrounded by artists and others who were involved in the arts. In addition, we were allowed to use the foundry facilities on our own time to produce our own work. It was like having a personal, super studio that included an enormous amount of support. The other employees were so generous with their knowledge and I spent as much time as I could learning molding and casting techniques. My first series of small works began there.

Being exposed to the large-scale art at Shidoni was as much of an education as was learning the technical aspects of the lost wax process. During my time at Shidoni I was exposed to art from all over the world. We exhibited Mark di Suvero along with other accomplished artists from outside of New Mexico.

I worked for Shidoni for ten years. I began as a receptionist and later moved into the position of assistant gallery director. I eventually became the gallery director and during that three-year period I decided to stop making art in order to fully concentrate on the directorship. I believe I was right in thinking that trying to do two full-time jobs would only dilute both.

Art Interview: What were your responsibilities as a director?

Colette Hosmer Fish Globe 2007 Mild steel 120 inches in diameter Location: Permanent Collection of the of city Albuquerque, New Mexico USA (Tingley Aquatic Park)

Colette Hosmer: I left Shidoni because I had an opportunity to go to San Francisco, California and collaborate with some old friends in building a non-profit organization called “Neurotechnologies Research Institute”. We analyzed brain-influencing devices. I lived in San Francisco for a year and found my time there to be interesting, fun, difficult, frustrating and mind-expanding. But after a year of directing the company I had had enough and longed to return to my home and life in Santa Fe. When I came back I received some good job offers in art administration, but I spent quite a bit of time instead thinking that I should make the break and do what I wanted to do. Consequently I decided to forego a “real” job and concentrate on making art.

I supported myself with any number of jobs. The only criteria being that they would pay my bills and give me as much time as possible in the studio. I had two paper routes for example, and for a while referred to myself as the oldest paperboy in Santa Fe. Following the paper routes, the remainder of each morning was spent working as a “Girl-Friday” to a rich lady. I would feed her animals, pull her weeds and do her shopping.

Colette Hosmer Rat Chair 1995 Rat skeletons, chair, m/m Life-size Private collection

Art Interview: How old were you by this time?

Colette Hosmer: I was 44.

Art Interview: So, do you consider yourself a late bloomer?

Colette Hosmer: Yes (Laughs) very much so. I thought I knew what the contemporary art world wanted and I was sure that I wasn’t it. So I just let myself be drawn in my own direction. During that time my early interest in the natural sciences found its way back into my art. I devoted the next several years to skinning animals, processing skeletons and utilizing these organic materials in my work. My friends knew what I was up to. I would find grocery bags containing dead animals at my door. (Laughs) Animals that had died of natural causes and fresh road kills would find their way to my house. A snake breeder who raised giant pythons and boa constrictors in Lubbock, Texas, supplied me for years. And, Pete’s Pets, a great pet store in town supplied me as well. I had a big upright freezer that I stored everything in and it was a fascinating time. I learned so much. My first real solo exhibition grew out of this work.

Art Interview: How many hours were you spending in the studio at that time?

Colette Hosmer: Every waking hour except those dedicated to earning a living. I had to go to bed early because of the paper routes, so I probably managed to scrape out about eight hours a day of studio work. There were many times when the electricity bill was due and I didn’t know where the money would come from. But somehow it came. My life was simple and I was very happy. I knew exactly what to do when I woke up in the morning. It was a very good time.

Art Interview: Were you still searching for your style and focus at that point?

Colette Hosmer Diptych Snake 1995 Python skeleton, copper, glass 24 x 13 x 5 inches Collection of: ARTWORK International, INC. - Santa Fe, New Mexico

I was surprised when a gallery director asked me to put a piece into a benefit show. I did and it sold right away. He then asked if I would give him more work and that’s how my career began. I went to work and built a show. I had developed an environment of Dermestid Beetles (christened “The Beetle Ranch” by friends) to help process skeletons. The show included five articulated skeleton marionettes; a raccoon, fox, porcupine, badger, cow and several pieces in which I used articulated snake skeletons to create line “drawings”.

Art Interview: How long did it take you to develop the series?

Colette Hosmer: I started the new work in the spring and the show opened in September, so it took me five or six months.

Art Interview: Has your work progressed naturally from the same language or have you experienced abrupt changes?

Colette Hosmer: My series of works can look different to the average viewer, but I feel that it all stems from the same basic language.

Colette Hosmer Pipe-line 1998 Dried preserved minnows, steel 9 x 8 x 6 feet Solo-exhibition: Colette Hosmer, The New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Art Interview: Were you casting the fish?

Colette Hosmer: No they were real!

Art Interview: Where were you getting so many fish?

Colette Hosmer: (Laughs) I walked into Kmart one day and checked out the sporting goods section where I found a plastic bag of dead preserved minnows. I bought all the packages they had. The bags hung around my studio for a while before I began to use them in sculptures. As my ideas developed I ran out of fish, so I found the name of the distributor on the bag. I called the “Brown Bear Bait Company” in Wisconsin and they agreed to sell minnows to me in bulk. Before it was all over I had ordered hundreds of pounds of minnows. They would arrive wet in big plastic bags and smelled like liquorish from the anise and light formaldehyde wash. I would scrub each and every fish with a toothbrush to get rid of loose scales and laid them out on screens to dry.

Art Interview: Was it a financial challenge for you to buy so many fish or had you already found financial success through your art by then?

Colette Hosmer: Oh no, it was a financial challenge at that time. But they sold the fish to me at inexpensive bulk prices, so I was able to get a real start that way.

Art Interview: How did your career actually start to take off?

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This oral history transcript is the result of a digitally recorded interview with Colette Hosmer on July 11, 2008. The interview took place over the telephone between Berlin, Germany and Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA and was conducted by Brendan Davis for Art Interview Online Magazine.