Earl Hooks began his career during the early 1950s as a crafts and ceramics instructor at a Washington, D. C., adult recreation program. He continued to teach for a number of years, first at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina (1953-1954) and then at Indiana University North Campus (1954-1961). Between 1961 and the year of his retirement, 1967, Hooks served as both a professor and chair of the department of art at Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee.

During his sixteen years as an art instructor, Hooks taught his students, both through lectures and by example, the value of taking risks and a deep appreciation of the natural world and humanity's proper situation within that structure. Created four years after his retirement from Fisk, Earl Hook's Maternal Family is a unique expression of the complex interrelationships between life, nature, and humanity. The central focus of Maternal Family is the connection of the individual–through either familial or personal relationships–to the larger structure of humanity and nature.   T. F.