Joel Hotchkiss was born in 1949 in Torrington Connecticut and raised in the small New England town of Sherman.

His father, DeWolfe Hotchkiss worked on Madison Avenue in several of the big Ad Agencies during the 1960’s. Born into a creative family environment, Joel sought a career in art and attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, including studying overseas in Rome, Italy during his Senior year, graduating in 1971 with a BFA in Advertising Design and Communication. He moved to Boston, MA and worked as an Art Director at MacDougall Associates in Salem, MA.

In 1976 he began exploring kinetic art by making and balancing mobiles in his Newberry and Beacon Street apartments. He discovered that the mobile art form required multiple disciplines that just coincided with the talents he had in his creative arsenal. He wanted to move on from a career in the "client driven" advertising industry and become a mobile artist incorporating his own creative style. In his mid 20's he had found a creative path he wanted to follow and made a bold decision to move across the United States to Oakland, California where he began a new creative journey, fully dedicating himself to the "art of mobiles".

The early 1980's in the San Francisco Bay Area was a very exciting period for Joel. He commuted daily from Oakland across the San Rafael Bridge into Marin County to a Studio/Workshop called Kinetic Objects where he worked on and perfected the art of mobile making. He took courses to learn both welding and metal working techniques to be able to work with a wide range of metals including copper, brass, aluminum, steel and stainless as well as introducing plastic and fabric applications into his work.

Joel recalls: "At the end of the week I would drive from Marin County down across the Golden Gate Bridge and into San Francisco to deliver the new mobiles I had made to Don Conard's Gallery in Ghirardelli Square. Waiting there would be a check for the mobiles that sold that week and I would then return back home across the Bay Bridge to Oakland with money in my pocket". The plan was working! v "Designing and creating contemporary mobiles for over 40+ years has been an awesome artistic journey. Mobiles are an intriguing sculptural discipline where balance, motion, composition, scale, texture and color must all be considered in a finished design. I continuously explore new ideas for constructing the mobiles... drawing on creative impulses from past experiences that result in innovative approaches that can reveal new design direction, balancing techniques and mixed uses of a variety of materials."

“I believe mobiles add an energy and aesthetic quality to interior living spaces. The viewer either directly or subliminally picks up on the balance and movement that is occurring in mid air above their heads. They are like a companion that performs in time and space and effortlessly moves… requiring no energy source besides the soft wafts of air that pass through a room.”

Joel has designed an impressive line of mobile designs for both interiors and exterior settings. Often seen and sold in Galleries and Museum Stores nationwide including San Francisco MOMA and the Guggenheim Museum NYC. He also creates larger mobile commissions for residential and commercial spaces.

Currently Joel works with his wife Sandra and two assistants at their Studio/Workshop and Gallery located in West Stockbridge, MA. His complete line of mobiles are represented on his website at www.artmobiles.com