Media Contact: Kate Taylor Davis | 202-321-2878 | ktdavis@pyramid-atlantic.org
For Immediate Release March 7, 2024
ARTIST LATOYA M. HOBBS
TO CREATE NEW LIMITED EDITION PRINT AT PYRAMID
Hyattsville, MD – Baltimore-based artist LaToya M. Hobbs embarks on a Denbo Publishing Residency at Pyramid starting March 11, 2024. Over a period of roughly two weeks, LaToya will be working in Pyramid’s printshop to create a small print edition using Pyramid’s lithography capabilities and working with Pyramid’s studio artists.
The print will be unveiled in April alongside documentation of the process. “We are trying to keep our cool, but everyone is very excited to have LaToya in our studios. Many amazing artists work at Pyramid daily, but to have a guest artist as accomplished as LaToya come in for an intense and collaborative residency is particularly thrilling. The whole team can’t wait to support her time here and see what she creates,” remarked Executive Director Kate Taylor Davis.
LaToya is an artist, wife, and mother of two from Little Rock, AR. She received her B.A. in Painting from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and M.F.A. in Printmaking from Purdue University. Her work deals with figurative imagery that addresses the ideas of beauty, cultural identity, and womanhood as they relate to women of the African Diaspora.
LaToya has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, including showing at the National Art Gallery of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia; SCAD Museum of Art; Albright Knox Museum, and Sophia Wanamaker Galleries in San Jose, Costa Rica. Her work is housed in private and public collections such as the Harvard Art Museum, Petrucci Family Foundation
Collectionof African American Art, the National Art Gallery of Namibia, the Getty Research Institute, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. She is also a Professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art and a founding member of Black Women of Print, a collective whose vision is to make visible the narratives and works of Black women printmakers, past, present and future.
The Denbo Publishing Residency invites artists to Pyramid’s studios to work with staff on an edition of work in print form. Theedition (number of prints) produced is split 50/50 between the artist(s) and Pyramid. LaToya’s residency will be the second of its type after Pyramid’s reboot of its publishing program in 2023 with CA-based artist duo Jessica Sabogal and Shanna Strauss who collaborated on a print entitled The Defender.
Prior to 2023, print publishing at Pyramid had been on hiatus for nearly 20 years. Pyramid’s collection of work made by this type of residency includes prints, pulp paintings, and artist made books created and acquired between 1981 and 2007. Many of the artists who participated in the residency have since achieved greater prominence and influence, including Joyce J. Scott, William Christenberry, Miriam Schapiro, and Hung Liu. Pyramid is excited to add LaToya’s new work to this history and hopes to host artists annually through this program. The Denbo Publishing Residency is made possible in part by support from the family of artist Beverly Denbo. Pyramid is also grateful to Landex Development, which operates MiXt Food Hall, Artisan 4100 and Studio 3807 in Brentwood, for providing housing during the artist’s stay in the Gateway Arts District.
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Image Credit: Top: Photo of LaToya Hobbs taken by Mike Jon.
ABOUT PYRAMID ATLANTIC
pyramidatlanticartcenter.org
Founded in 1981, Pyramid Atlantic is a nonprofit contemporary art center fostering the creative disciplines of papermaking, printmaking, and book arts within a collaborative community. We equip, educate, and exhibit in our historic Hyattsville home. Our vision is to create an artistic hub in Hyattsville that inspires and enables local, national, and international artists to create and innovate in our core disciplines; elevates the local arts and small business scene; and enhances the quality of life for artists and neighbors. We value artistic excellence, infrastructure for artists, hands-on experiences, and collaboration.