Mark Hosford’s “Interdiamentional”

Mark Hosford was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1974 and grew up in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park, Kansas. He moved to Lawrence, Kansas, in 1993 to pursue a BFA in Studio Arts at the University of Kansas. He received his MFA in 2001 from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. That same year, Hosford accepted a teaching position at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is currently an Associate Professor of Art. Hosford has served as president of the Southern Graphics Education Outreach and Vice President of Outreach for the Southern Graphics Council, the largest international printmaking organization. Hosford has a national, international, and regional exhibition record, including exhibitions in Poland, Germany, South Korea, China, New York, Boston, and California. His work is included in numerous public and private collections. He is represented by Cumberland Gallery in Nashville, Tennessee.

Specializing in drawing, printmaking, and animation, Hosford’s work draws from a fascination with ghost stories, oddities, stream of consciousness, and personal narratives. His work often portrays an alternate reality where fertile and untethered imaginations are allowed to roam in wild abandonment.

Of the work featured in Interdiamentional, Hosford says, “my recent prints evolved from a series of drawings I created based on the Rorschach Inkblot tests. Through that project I became continually interested in imagery that is based on mirrored forms, while at the same time including elements that break the perfect symmetry as unpredictable organic forms interact with the more rigid geometric architecture. Much like the surrealists use of automatism, I let elements occur through the works without trying to over-rationalize their existence. I am interested in tapping my own personal history as well as current events in order to find starting points for compositions, while letting the imagery diverge at any point. A checker board or the video game Q-bert are the base for some, while a story about Henrietta Lacks and her cancer cells are the base for another.

Many of my recent works showcase ways in which a normally hidden realm begins to manifest itself and intersect with the human world. In the ectoplasm fountains, cubic architecture forms begin to ooze and percolate with otherworldly brightly colored goo. I love that the term ectoplasm itself can refer to both an actual biological structure as well as the physical manifestation of spirits. For me, the term also illustrates how people often have a fascination and misunderstanding of their own bodily processes, attaching a supernatural origin to a physical function of our body. I enjoy how we can be both scientific and spiritualistic at the same time.”