Carving Out Time

LaToya M. Hobbs: It’s Time presents the series Carving Out Time, a life-size suite of woodcuts by Arkansas-born and Baltimore-based artist LaToya M. Hobbs. Unfolding over five scenes, the work depicts one day in Hobbs’s life with her husband, visual artist Ariston Jacks, and their two children. Hobbs shares the labor and intimacy of her private life in these prints, centering the negotiations she brokers daily to balance her manifold responsibilities—as a wife, mother, educator, and artist. The series is also a powerful statement about her influences and self-fashioning as an artist: references to paintings, sculptures, and prints by prominent artists such as Elizabeth Catlett, Alma Thomas, Valerie Maynard, and Kerry James Marshall appear throughout. Carving Out Time (2020–21) is the largest expression within Hobbs’s ongoing Salt of the Earth project, which she characterizes as “the personification of Black women as salt in relation to their role as preservers of family, culture and community.” A contemplation of nuanced concepts of time and labor, the work offers an affecting visual statement that is at once deeply personal and universal. LaToya M. Hobbs: It’s Time is the inaugural presentation of the full suite of prints and provides a unique opportunity to view the drawings that the artist made in preparation for the project, which she generously lent to the exhibition for their first public display. Hobbs received a B.A. in painting from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and an M.F.A. in printmaking from Purdue University. She is a co-founder of Black Women of Print and recently completed residencies at the Penland School of Craft and the Women’s Studio Workshop. Hobbs won the Janet and Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize in 2020 and was a finalist for the Queen Sonja Print Award in 2022. She teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Organized by Elizabeth M. Rudy, Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints, Harvard Art Museums, with Ana Barros (Manager of Campus Partnerships), Jessica Ficken (Assistant Curator of the Collection, Modern and Contemporary Art), Tayana Fincher (Manager of Public Programs), Erica Lawton (Administrative Coordinator, Director’s Office), Sarah Lieberman (Cunningham Fellow in Academic and Public Programs), Tara Metal (Digital Content Manager), Marvin Smith (Staff Assistant, Modern and Contemporary Art), and Jarvis Subia (Manager of Community Partnerships). Research contributions by Nora Rosengarten (Ph.D. Candidate, History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University). Special thanks to these students: Muriel Dol ’24, Imani Fonfield ’25, Eden Getahun ’25, Jai Gillard ’25, Jadyn Matthews ’24, Mariah Norman ’25, Ogechi Obi ’26, Anya Sesay ’25, Ebony Smith ’24, and Maryann Uduebo ’26; and thanks to Maya Alvarez-Harmon ’25, Nneka Arinzeh ’25, and the Association of Black Harvard Women for collaborating with the Harvard Art Museums on this project. Support for LaToya M. Hobbs: It’s Time is provided by the Robert M. Light Print Department Fund, the Melvin R. Seiden and Janine Luke Fund for Publications and Exhibitions, and the generous support of the Harvard Art Museums Prints Committee. Related programming is supported by the M. Victor Leventritt Lecture Series Endowment Fund. Modern and contemporary art programs at the Harvard Art Museums are made possible in part by generous support from the Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art.