Charles Hobson: HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN

HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN

The Smile

The man tipped his hat
to the girl in the street and she smiled
which warmed him so that he put a dollar
in the violin case of the street musician
who bought coffee for himself and shared it with his dog
who wagged his tail amusing the old lady at the counter
who laughed so much she gave the waitress a $100 tip
which the waitress needed desperately
so her infant daughter would be warm enough
to sleep through the night without crying
and the quiet opened the mind
of the neighbor in the next apartment
so he could solve a complex quadratic equation
which won him an A in the course and later a post
at a distinguished research institute
where he discovered the vibration in the stars
behind Orion's belt which proved the Big Bang
and the origin of the universe.

Sandra Hobson started taking photographs with discipline and with a special eye in 2019. Since then she has continued to photograph the light each day. Throughout her life she has traveled the world studying indigenous cultures and their healing practices. Her photographs capture the light she finds through that study.

Charles Hobson initiated a practice of writing poetry seriously in 2018 inspired by Billy Collins’ anthology entitled Poetry 180. He has published limited edition artists books since 1986 and taught for more than 20 years about artist books at the San Francisco Art Institute. In 2007, Stanford University acquired his design archive. In 2019, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco acquired thirty-two of his artist's books and mounted an exhibition of his work.

This book is housed in an archival photo box with a pull-up tab that lifts a back panel that acts as an easel for viewing the book.

Sandra Hobson’s photographs were taken on an Apple iPhone 13 and printed on Epson Ultra Presentation Paper without cropping from the original framing. The poems by Charles Hobson were initially hand-written on scraps of paper and transferred to Microsoft Word for editing. The photographs and poems have been paired together for the edition using Quark XPress. The text pages are printed on Arches 88 Paper, a 300 gm mould-made paper made in France. The typeface is Cambria. Charles Hobson designed the project and assembled it with the assistance of Alice Shaw, Marilyn Russell and Sandra Hobson.

10 x 8 x 1 inches. 51 pages. Archival Box measures 11 x 9 x 1.25 inches.

Publication Price: $2,400. Edition of 20 copies.

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