Erin Shafkind’s Illustrated Studio Tours, Part 4: Robert Hardgrave

The Hardgrave Cycle: Create. Destroy. Create again.

Painter Robert Hardgrave leads me inside Building C in Ballard. One of about twenty-five artists who occupy the divided warehouse, Hardgrave has been here almost three years. Previously, he worked in his basement — or wherever he could spread out.

Scattered throughout his space are wondrous bits of color, organic shapes painted on canvas and paper that look like candy and fire dripping together in a strange yet serious dance.

Lately he’s been cutting up old drawings and paintings to make new works. He shows me a new collage: it’s an amazing pig/dog creature whose layers don’t really line up, but work.

He also shows me his flat files, large drawers often used in libraries for holding maps. If you didn’t know, flat files are like gold to an artist. And within them lay treasures of all sorts.

Follow the rest of the tour after the jump.

We talk about philosophical ideas around regeneration, destroying perfectly good work to make new work.

 “I don’t think you can have good creation without good destruction,” says Hardgrave. “Being a part of nature, we too are destructive and it’s bound to happen because that’s the way life operates.”

Hardgrave works with an intuitive eye. Having drawn and painted seriously for about twenty years, he is very adept with line, color, shape, brush and scissors. He works by “feel” — genuinely trusting the process. He knows some ideas make it and some don’t. Working six or more hours a day for six days a week gives him time to truly create, destroy and create again.

“That’s kind of the beauty of art,” he adds. “You don’t really know where you’re going to go.”

I have known Robert for about ten years and have seen him progress through all sorts of materials: from brushes and paints, to sewing creatures he called Transplants (soft sculptures made from various stuffed animal parts and attached to hospital gown fabric forms), to designing skateboards, to cutting up canvases and stitching them back together. He never stops working and so his is work is always changing, growing — claiming a larger stake in the world.

“I am alive,” he says, “And my work is alive, and that’s how people will know I was alive when I am dead.”

Hardgrave is the real deal; he works and has shows, and is making his way into the world of art books. Just recently he was included in the book Further, and attended a book signing at SF MoMA.

See him here, looking like the master of his universe?

Towards the end of our visit, he talks about what others might feel when they see his work. He hopes people like it.

He relates that every time he puts something away and then looks at it over time, he has changed. He tells me, “Making things can be like time travel.”

I don’t believe there are any dull moments in Robert’s studio, but if he ever needs a break, there’s always juggling.

Photos by Erin Shafkind

Hardgrave will be part of a group show at SOIL in Seattle that Shafkind is curating in August, and will show work at Grey Gallery in September 2010. He is represented by Joshua Liner in Chelsea, NY and will have a solo show with David B. Smith in Denver in December. Follow his work at roberthardgrave.com

Erin Shafkind is about to complete her MFA program in Visual Art through the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. She’s an artist, educator and is ever-so-slowly venturing into the world of writing. To see more, read her blog and check out her own art Web site.