Jim Hodges

When I started working with mirrors, it seemed to be the perfect material to stand in for that waiting.

I wasn't interested in holding onto the evidence of things.

I work from a personal place, and the work has personal meaning for me.

Landscape is a piece that is emotional and psychological.

My latest works are these things with light bulbs.

Color is for me the purest form of expression, the purest abstract reality.

I was trying to write an autobiography using prints and patterns that reference emotional, psychological, and personal development in my work, as a person growing up, figuring out who I was. I used fabrics to stand in for occurrences.

For a while, I thought a lot about lineage. Where do I belong? Who am I standing next to?

There is a broad range of reaction to the work, as there is a broad range of work I make.

I was feeling a strong need to change, grow, and break with particular things that were going on in my life and my history, and the material was the perfect answer for that.

When I make art, I think about its ability to connect with others, to bring them into the process.

I think young people have a wonderful reaction to color because it's not screwed up by too many references.

I think that some works are more accessible than others.

But most people don't come up to me and express a lot of emotion.

As a viewer, my own work elicits strong emotional reaction from me.

I move very slowly. It's usually material first. I sit with the material for a long time.

It's as if I were collaborating with myself, revealing my relationship to the material. My hand would make the drawing. Then my mouth would transmit it.

However, some of my work is very subtle, and one should expect very subtle reactions to it.

Color is an intense experience on its own.

Often, I work out of my work. One work takes me to the next thing.

I'm an average person.