In Beth Hoeckel's world, boys camp out in front of the moon, children climb ladders to the sky and women walk on water.
The collage and multimedia artist -- and Baltimore native -- is enamored by vintage imagery: meticulously freeing gemstones, mountains, eyes and more from the confines of discarded book and magazine pages, often to surrealistic effect. Hoeckel's work became recognizable on a larger scale last year when Baltimore synth-pop band Future Islands used her collage "Float" as the art on their breakthrough album "Singles."
Opening tonight, Terrault Contemporary becomes home to the 35-year-old's solo exhibition "Lost & Tell." Bringing together collages, found trinkets and personal items from Hoeckel's own collection, it explores the personal and impersonal -- the assigning of meaning to otherwise worthless objects, as well as the perception of sentimental objects as meaningless.
Hoeckel sat down ahead of her show to discuss sentimentality, treasure hunting and love letters.
Tell us about your solo exhibition at Terrault Contemporary. What was inspiring you?
It's called "Lost & Tell," which is basically a combination of "lost and found" and "show and tell." Those are two things I have been interested in for awhile. Collecting old stuff, basically -- mostly books and magazines -- which is where I get all my materials for collages, which is what I do mostly, collages. It's kind of like a curated showcase of a lot of stuff that I've collected over the years, some of it which I've made into collages, and some of it is going to be kind of an installation of stuff, basically what a lot of people would consider to be garbage. But it's kind of meaningful garbage in a way. It's a "one man's trash is another man's treasure" kind of thing, which is kind of how I've been making my work for the past five years, just from old books and magazines.
Do you get most of your books and magazines at used bookstores and flea markets?
Yeah, all over the place. I've collected for years. I've lived in all different cities, so [it's] kind of from all over the place. But lately I've been getting a lot of stuff from The Book Thing. That place is kind of amazing. Everything is donation there, so it's free. Basically, people take their old trash that they no longer want, books and magazines, and just drop it off there, so you never know what you're going to get. I've gotten a lot of stuff there.
Do you find that parameters, like being limited to the items people donate at The Book Thing, help you? Is that inspirational or limiting?
I definitely find it inspirational, because it's kind of like a treasure hunt. Especially if I have something specific that I'm looking for, like a certain kind of gemstone or tree or something, an image of that, then it's kind of a fun scavenger hunt to try to find it, and then along the way finding a lot of other stuff that I didn't expect to find. It can be really fun and inspirational but also challenging, which I guess is part of the fun.
Have you always been a treasure hunter and found the joy in people's discarded objects?
Yeah, since I was probably in high school. I started getting into vintage clothes and stuff when I was probably 14. I started going to thrift stores. I think I just started noticing, especially in old books, you find a lot of weird artifacts like wallet photos or people's business cards or handwritten notes and love letters. I sort of started collecting those little things because it's small stuff. I'm not a hoarder. It's very curated; it's not just any old junk. That kind of stuff I've kept with me over the years. It's easy to store it.
Do you find yourself constructing narratives around the objects you find?
Yeah, totally. It's funny -- it really makes you wonder what certain people consider to be really important or sentimental, maybe someone else considers just to be a throwaway piece of trash. Stuff you find in books, like Social Security cards -- important stuff -- I've found love letters in the pockets of jackets at the thrift store. To me, that kind of stuff is important and has value, sentimental value or some kind of personal value, and then to someone else it's maybe … I don't know, I've always saved that stuff, too. I know some people don't. It's maybe frowned upon to hold onto the past. It's considered maybe a sign of weakness or something to be sentimental. But I've always been fascinated by sentimentality and what some people consider important and why.
Has your work changed or evolved in recent years, or as you approached the solo show?
Yes and no. It's definitely evolved. I think I still use a lot of the same techniques that I've been using for the past few years. But it's gotten maybe more mature. A little bit more experimental, a little bit less literal, some of it. A little more on the abstract side. So it definitely has evolved. I wouldn't say it's dramatically different.
What has the experience been like of putting together your own show?
It's really exciting and I'm looking forward to it. It's a smaller space so it's hard to decide what I'm going to put in and what I'm going to leave out. I can't, obviously, put everything in there, so I tried to narrow it down to a more specific area of stuff that I've been working on, which is more personal than stuff I would normally show, for me, anyway. It's been different for me. It's less retrospective and more specifically curated.
In what ways is it more personal than in the past? Are you using your own artifacts?
I am, there will be some. I've been playing around with the idea of love and loss in a way, and the idea of how it can be really meaningful and at the same time kind of meaningless. Especially if you take your own personal stuff of your own that you've saved over the years, and then you have all these other strangers' stuff that I've been collecting; when you put it all together it's just a big mass of meaningless trash, but really it holds sentimental value to someone somewhere, whether it's me or someone I've never met.
THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN EDITED AND CONDENSED
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