Artist appeals to Mass market

Anthony Radford | Bendigo Weekly | 12-Aug-2011 1.25

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ART WORKS: Geoff Hocking.
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Designer, academic and publisher Geoff Hocking is a most enterprising man, but even he was a little surprised to land the commission for The Australian Children’s Mass Book.
“I haven’t got the emotional baggage some might have in relation to the church,” the non-Catholic design lecturer at La Trobe University Bendigo said.
“They liked the quirky illustrations I did. The biggest challenge was to get the priest right.”
The little mass book is published by John Garratt in Melbourne, who says the response has “exceeded all expectations”.
Already in its third print run, the book has been released into the UK, and the publishing company is expecting to release versions for the USA and New Zealand soon.
Mr Hocking, a “Methodist boy from Golden Square”, lives in Castlemaine where he runs his own publishing house, New Chum Press.
He has written, illustrated and published books about Goldfields history, including The Red Ribbon Rebellion, and Early Castlemaine.
“I don’t do boring,” he said about his commission to illustrate the mass book.
“We had to go through the Catholic censor to
make sure everything was right, but apart from a couple of minor things, we didn’t have to change anything.
“It didn’t worry me to draw mad monks in stained glass windows and kids who looked like real kids, a little bit naughty.”
To draw the priest, Mr Hocking went for the middle-road.
“He couldn’t be too young and sexy or too old and crusty,” he said.
“Glasses made him look old, and straight hair made him look too foppish, so we gave him curly hair and that made him look benign.”
Mr Hocking has also just won the commission to write the history of Werribee.
“That’s another Bendigo coup,” he said.
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