Location: Hotchkiss Mobiles Showroom & Gift Gallery, Photo Credit: Nathan Haddad
The creative economy is one of the integral pieces of what makes the Berkshires attractive for thousands of people who live in and visit the region every year. This month, as we celebrate the creative economy in the Berkshires, we shine our spotlight on the work of one of our local artists and creative entrepreneurs. World renowned for his work with delicate and handcrafted art mobiles, Joel Hotchkiss, owner of Hotchkiss Mobiles Showroom & Gift Gallery in West Stockbridge, found his niche in the creative economy in a Beacon Street apartment in Boston in 1976, sold art in San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square, before finding a balance between California and New England in the Berkshires.
Growing up in Sherman, Connecticut, Joel was surrounded by the arts. His father was a painter and an art director. Today, an oil on canvas landscape painted by his father hangs on the wall of the Hotchkiss Mobiles showroom. It is not a surprise that Joel’s interest in art grew serious as a teenager with line drawings of portraits and figures in motion. There are a number of pieces throughout Joel’s showroom and work space that pay tribute to his early love for line drawing: faces and dancing bodies are a recurring theme in a number of his pieces. By the 1980s, Joel was a budding entrepreneur. He was living in Oakland, selling his sculptures in the Bay Area of California, and just getting to know the love of his life, his wife Sandra. In 1993, he decided to make his home and move his studio to beautiful West Stockbridge in the Berkshires, buying a one of a kind workshop on Center Street in the heart of town. He works with two assistants and Sandra – an expert in women’s clothing and mobile-esque pieces of jewelry.
“I came here because it felt like California: a certain level of sophistication, experiential feeling, and an awareness of the important things in life. People live by them here. Life is multidimensional and precious.”
Joel’s studio is filled with whimsical mobiles of all different sizes and shapes, a giant metal giraffe, and even a Hotchkiss brand automobile. An assortment of mobiles from as far back to 1989 hang from the ceiling and there are dozens of sculptures of twisted metal and wood morphed into beautiful visages that adorn the walls. Current projects lay about the workshop tables in various stages of assembly, while a sundry of devices lay dormant ready to transform pieces of metal into beautiful works of art at a moment’s notice. Recently, Joel was commissioned to create a mobile for 1Berkshire on behalf of Tanglewood. We gifted the piece to Tanglewood at our Celebrate the Berkshires event where the BSO/Tanglewood were honored for Putting the Berkshires on the Map. The piece called Overture is a representation of how composition and balance in music can be translated into a delicate piece of “dancing” artwork and now hangs in the BSO offices in Boston.
In the Berkshires, the creative economy affects everyone around us. Joel Hotchkiss found his niche here: “The Berkshires are open-minded progressive, art oriented, rural and cultural at the same time. The people here appreciate the delicate things that matter most.”