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 England’s vanishing agricultural landscape. Represented in museums and private collections, Hoffman has public sculptures installed in towns and cities across the region.

A contributor to WBUR’s 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 farm’s 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.

Selected Recent Exhibitions:

2021
When We Were Trees, Hopkinton Center for the Arts, Two-person exhibit with Ariel Matisse
The Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA, Beyond Walls Exhibit

2020
Sea Change, Studios Without Walls, Juried Outdoor Exhibit, The Riverway, Brookline, MA

Attleboro Arts Museum, Juried Sculpture Exhibit

Water Change: Where Spirit, Nature, and Civilization Meet, The Art Ramble, Hapgood Forest, Concord, MA Four sculptures: The Faucet, No Water No Food, A Prayer for Rain, The Well is Dry

2019
Changing Landscape: Sculpture at the Eustis Estate, Juried Exhibit, Milton, MA

Spirit of Place, a juried outdoor sculpture exhibit, Castle Hill on the Crane Estate, Ipswich MA
Kaddish, Solo Exhibit of Watercolors, Indian Hill Music, Littleton, MA

Generations: The Art of Linda Hoffman & Ariel Matisse, Sculpture, Hopkinton  Center for the Arts, Hopkinton, MA

Concord Art, Juried Winter Exhibit I, Concord, MA

2018
Unexpected Gestures: Art on the Trails, Outdoor Sculpture at the Beals Preserve, Southborough, MA. Three bronze sculptures installed along a stone wall.

Grounds for Play: Sculptures that excite the Imagination, The Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA

The Teapot Explorer, Studios Without Walls, Riverway Park, Outdoor Installation with Gabrielle White

Sculpture in the Garden, A juried exhibit at Massachusetts Horticultural Society’s The Gardens at Elm Bank, Wellesley, MA

2017 
Gifts from the Garden, A juried exhibit at Massachusetts Horticultural Society’s The Gardens at Elm Bank, Wellesley, MA

Art on the Trails: Finding Solace in the Woods, Outdoor Sculpture Exhibit juried by Mary Tinti, Southborough, MA
Musketaquid 2017, Emerson Center for the Arts, Concord, MA
Boston Design Center, A juried group exhibit featuring members of NESA, New England Sculptors Association, Boston MA

After Apple Pruning, an exhibition of sculpture using apple prunings by Linda Hoffman with Lynn Horsky, Ariel Matisse, and Gabrielle White; The Gallery at Villageworks, Acton MA

2016
Off the Wall, a juried small works show, Concord, MA
Art and Agriculture: Four Seasons on Concord Farm, The Umbrella Arts and Environment, Concord, MA
Temenos, Studios Without Walls, Riverway Park, Outdoor Installation with Gabrielle White

2015 
Compost Tea, in collaboration with Gabrielle White; Studios Without Walls, Riverway Park, Outdoor Installation

Floating Hearts, in collaboration with Gabrielle White, Around the Pond and Through the Woods, Outdoor Sculpture Exhibit, Harvard, MA

       
Recent Public Collections /Commissions: 

Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Massachusetts

Town of Littleton, New Hampshire

Forest Tales, Stow Conservation Trust, Leggett Woods Thirteen sculptures for you to discover along the wooded trail.

The Elliot Tree, Ten Acre Elementary School, Wellesley, MA Bronze sculpture in tribute to retiring headmaster, Christopher Elliot in collaboration with Ariel Matisse.

Harvard UU Church, A new chalice

Essays, Books, Catalogues:

2016 Orchard Revival, essay published in the Mountain Record, the Zen Practitioner’s Journal, Earth Medicine Issue, Summer 2016

2012 The Ox Herding Series v.2, Ten bronze sculptures and commentary of the Zen Buddhist Stages of the path of Enlightenment.

2007—11 Founding Editor of Wild Apples, a bi-annual journal of nature, art, and inquiry.

2005 The Ox Herding Series, Ten bronze sculptures and commentary of the Zen Buddhist Stages of the path of Enlightenment.              

2004 A Circus Comes to Fruitlands, Twenty-five new sculptures with an introduction by Director, Maud Ayson

2003 Stations of the Heart, Fourteen Poems and Sculptures

2001 Winter Air, Fine Art Letterpress Book with Prose, Poems and Prints

1999 Fragments of the Heart, Fourteen poems and sculptures

1998 Language and Landscape, The Agricultural Tool Series, Fourteen poems and sculptures