The Artist and the Orchard: A Memoir

About Chloe GravesLinda Hoffman

An honors graduate of Bryn Mawr College with a degree in Fine Arts Linda Hoffman studied at the Sorbonne and at the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship after graduating from college she trained for two years in the Noh Theater in Kyoto Japan. A lifelong passion for poetry converged in 1981 with her work as a graphic artist in the form of her first sculpture a poem in cloth launching an extensive exploration of narrative sculpture incorporating language natural fibers wood stone and found objects. In 1997 she began using old agricultural tools to create lyrical and poignant sculptures decrying New Englands vanishing agricultural landscape. Represented in museums and private collections Hoffman has public sculptures installed in towns and cities across the region. A contributor to WBURs Cognoscenti Hoffman was a founding editor of Wild Apples a journal of nature art and inquiry. She is the author of three chapbooks of art and poetry and the letterpress art book Winter Air created in memory of her mother Dr. Annette Weiner. In 2006 five years after Hoffman and her three children moved into an old farmhouse with an abandoned orchard Old Frog Pond Farm in Harvard Massachusetts became the first organic pick-your-own orchard in Massachusetts. Now with more than fifteen years of experience growing organic apples Hoffman contributes to a holistic apple growers forum teaches workshops and is respected by an influential holistic apple-growing community. She lives with her partner Blase his parrot Orco and friends who move in for a few days weeks or a season who are part of the farms growing creative and spiritual community. A Zen Buddhist Hoffman's dharma name Shinji means Truth in the Soil. The Artist and the Orchard: A Memoir is her first book.