by Maggie Hohle

I spent my childhood trying to explain to classmates what my parents did for a living. In the late ‘70s, when most people’s parents worked with their hands, “teaching graphic design,” which my dad did at state colleges around the country, wasn’t as comprehensible to the majority of high schoolers as it is now, and my mom’s “career”, which had morphed from doing in-betweening on Mr. Magoo to editing American Home Crafts and Sphere, to making toys in our living room and later in a shop in a converted bank barn, was completely Greek to friends and others who asked the supposedly innocuous question, “What do your parents do?”  It was that question that has inspired most of my work since: What do we do? What does it mean to ask the question, and what answer are we really looking for? I took a liberal arts education at St. John’s College to Japan, where I spent 15 years profiling Japanese designers and other creators for Graphis and other publications, dipping into the worlds of fashion, product design and architecture on the way. In Petaluma since 2007, I continue to ask. What do you do?

To find out more about Maggie check out her website at www.maggietext.com