Fredric Hobbs

Artist and filmmaker Fredric Hobbs was born on December 30, 1931 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hobbs attended Menlo School in Menlo, California and graduated from Cornell University in 1953 with a B.A. in History. Following service as an Air Force Officer, Fredric maintained a studio in Madrid, Spain where he attended the Academia de San Fernando de Bellas Artes. (Hobbs later had studios based in both San Francisco and Carmel, California.) In 1963 Fredric created a radical new type of automobile art called "Parade Sculptures." This trio of driveable sculptures -- Sun Chariot, Three Thieves, and Trojan Horse, respectively -- removed art from its museum environment, thereby confronting a mass audience under circumstances of everyday life. Moreover, these three parade pieces were exhibited in both New York and California as well as were featured as part of a famous national traveling show entitled The Highway. In the early 1970's Hobbs pioneered another art form known as Art Eco, which combines fine art, environmental technology, solar/nomadic architecture, and interactive communication with an ecologically balanced lifestyle. Furthermore, Fredric wrote, directed, and/or produced four highly distinctive and idiosyncratic films: Troika (1969), Roseland (1971), Alabama's Ghost (1973), and Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973). In 1978 Hobbs wrote and illustrated the book "The Richest Place on Earth" about the history of Nevada's Comstock Lode in the 1860's and 1870's in collaboration with 'Warren Hinckle (I)'. In the mid-1980's Fredric worked on another innovative art form called Fastfuture and interactive television/museum exhibitions that had a global release. His art work has been displayed in such notable venues as the Oakland Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Sierra Nevada Museum of Art, the Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angles, and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. In addition, Hobbs is the author of the books "Eat Your House: Art Eco Guide to Self-Sufficiency," "The Spirit of the Monterey Coast," and "A Tale of Two Cats."