Zonk, the Dreaming Tortoise
David Hoobler is a native San Francisco Bay Area artist presently living and working in Oakland. David has been attracted to the arts all his life. "When I was a child growing up in Concord we had a painting done by a great aunt and exhibited in the Pan Pacific expo in the Marina in 1915. This picture and my grandmother's tales of the women painters in the family seemed to me, as a child, part of an entire world of mystery and magic. My grandmother had survived the 1906 earthquake and was a great story teller in the Irish tradition as were a number of my relatives. This seems like the perfect influences for a children's picture book author."Mr. Hoobler has pursued many arts over the years starting with story telling and drawing as a child, "I got in trouble a lot in school for my constant doodling." Later in high school it became music and ceramics and in college film-making and drawing. David graduated Sonoma State University with a B.A. in studio art."I think I am like the vast majority of artist, writers and musicians who work at many vocations earning a living and creating art as time allows.  I've done a lot of jobs and finally ended up moving to Arizona for a writing job at a hospital in Tucson and acting as co-ordinator for creativity retreats in Mexico and the desert. The work ran out and I ended up working as an extra in a bunch of cowboy movies. Lot's of free food and I love movie making. An assistant director pick me out of a scene and gave me some lines, this got into the Screen Actors Guild.  With the help of some of the casting crews I was able to scrape along with bit parts, commercial work and odd jobs (lots of odd jobs) until Tucson's sound stage burned down and I moved back to the Bay Area."While on one of the Mexico retreats David had started the story for Zonk and the first drawings of the dreaming tortoise. "The Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona and Mexico is a magical place, intense, hostile and beautiful. This is where the images were born. My mom liked the art and I had some framed and sent to her. When she died a few years ago I decided to sit down and finish the book. If she hadn't thought the art was good I might have abandoned the project all together. I hung a show of prints in the neighborhood cafe/gallery and the orders started pouring in. I had so many people asking for the book and buying art I decided to print the book myself, paying for most the cost out of art sales."David has an animated version of Zonk, the dreaming tortoise coming out on CD shortly and book 2 is on the way. "I feel like I've finally found my avenue of artist expression. I know now I am the tortoise and a dreamer."