ARTIST BOOKS

Winter Air is a book Hoffman wrote in memory of her mother, Dr. Annette B. Weiner, an extraordinary woman who did not go to college until her mid-thirties when she was married with two young children. Weiner went on to graduate school at Bryn Mawr College where she received her PhD. in anthropology in 1974 and then very quickly became well known in her field for her groundbreaking book, Woman of Power, Men of Renown, New Perspectives on Trobriand Exchange. She was Chair of the Anthropology Department at New York University and then became Graduate Dean of Arts and Sciences. She died after a courageous battle with cancer in 1997.

Hoffman kept a journal on daily visits to an uninhabited island in the Nashua River in Pepperell, MA at the same time as her mother was traveling all over the world in her struggle with cancer. The book traces in distilled language their interwoven journeys. A portrait emerges of both mother and daughter from their early experiences together in New Guinea to Hoffman's return in 1998 to the Trobriands with her mother's ashes.

Winter Air contains nine digital prints, the journal entries and short poems. Praxis Bindery in Easthampton, MA made the drop box and book cover with cream and dark blue handmade flax paper. Wolfe Editions, Portland, Maine set the text with in monotype Bembo. The book is not only a very moving story, but an exquisite object.

Winter Air is in the collections of the Boston Public Library, Houghton Library at Harvard University, Smith College, The Harry Ransom Library at the University of Texas, The Pierpont Morgan Library in New York and The Library of Congress.