“I’m living in a house form the 1830s, so obviously I am interested in history,” says artist Barry Hantman inside his 13-room home on Grand Street in West Trenton.
With 20 of his works at the Straube Center in Pennington and several works at the Element Hotel near the Mercer County Airport, Hantman is ready to talk about his history of art making and collecting.
“Mixed media and assemblage,” he says about his work, “I’ve been doing it since the 1960s when I was living in Philadelphia.”
He was also visiting old buildings, where he would find pieces of glass, wood, and ceramics to use.
Although he says plexiglass is his “latest” find, he sees the addition as part of a stream of creative work has “a kind of flow from one to another.”
Sitting in a front room surrounded by his collection of outsider art, various glass pieces, and furniture, Hartman talks of his personal history and says he was born in Newark — he calls it by its hometown reference of “Brick City” — but brought up in nearby Union.
“My mother was a suppressed artist, so she got me into art,” he says, adding that she took him to the Newark Museum and museums in New York.
Hantman says that while she drew and painted, she was a homemaker when he grew up in the late 1940s and 1950s.
However, he says, “My mother was my inspiration. She had an appreciation of art. (And) art was one of the few things that I was good at in school. “
At the same time, Hantman’s father running a downtown Newark furniture store seems to have influenced his son’s interest in collecting furniture — mission and mid-century modern — and a pair of Russian immigrant grandparents working in ceramics and quilt making shaped his decision to create “functional art.”
“I began majoring in ceramics and minoring in jewelry,” he says about his studies at the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts).
Reflecting on his decision, he says, “I was always more into using my hands and materials. I could draw, but not well. Paint, but not well. And when I was in college, the movement was designer craftsman, you were using 2-D skills to design and 3D skills to make it. You had to take courses in drafting, everything was done before computers, old school drafting. I still had to take painting and drawing and figure drawing. But I had to use my hands; I had to touch the material.”
Hantman says that as a boy he designed and made model mid-century-style homes.
“I wanted to be an architect but didn’t have the math skills,” he says as he lists his influences: Frank Lloyd Wright, Corbusier, and Bauhaus designers.
He says he went to PCA because they accepted him and lived on the street where mid-century architect Louis Kahn had an office and then went to Tyler School of Art when it was in Elkins Park, home to a Frank Lloyd Wright synagogue.
When he graduated, he found a job at Adrian College in Michigan but left after a year to return to New Jersey — but not alone.
“I married one of the students,” he says, noting that while she was not in any of his classes, the college disapproved of such a relationship.
He says that they moved to back to Union, where he was going to teach, but eventually he and his wife both took state jobs, he at the department of health, she at treasury.
They then moved to the Trenton area and after a few moves in the region settled at their home in Ewing.
He says that while he stayed at the state long enough to retire, he continued to create art.
“I worked on ceramics and assemblages. I took classes. When my wife passed away at 2018, the art brought me back to life. I was on the deep end. I can say art truly saved my life.”
Looking back at his art creation while working for the state, he says, “I was making art but not exhibiting it. From 2018, I’ve been showing all over the place.”
That includes three galleries at the New Hope Arts Center, As You Like It Gallery near Peddlers Village, and the Red Bank Artist Co-op.
“This is where it all happens,” he says in his basement work area, where there are tables covered with various materials, found objects, and works at various stages of completion.
“I just get materials and play and arrange until I get a composition I like,” he says sitting before a brightly colored plexiglass work in progress. “Then I photograph what I’m going to make it.”
“I arrange it like a puzzle. When you start to assemble, it looks good in the composition, then while you’re doing it, it changes, and I kind of go with the flow, I go with the materials. Rarely do I sketch.”
He references Russian-born American sculptor Louise Nevelson as one of his main influences.
Others include Bauhaus artist Wassily Kandinsky and Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian, whose compositions employed bold bright colors.
“My ceramics tended to be dull in color scheme,” he says of his early work. He says that he later moved towards materials and colors that provided sharper and bolder compositions.
He adds that he lets himself be inspired by the texture, color, and shape of the materials he gets from his suppliers.
While all this sounds simple, Hantman says that the process is not without difficulties. For example, problems develop while affixing materials to one another. Some glues won’t bond or will allow the pieces to slide and change the design — which may or may not be acceptable.
Then he mentions that he switched from glass because he was not able to control the firing process that fuses the glass pieces together, hence the switch to plexiglass.
Another is uncertainty about how the works will be received. “Plexi is not mainstream, and I have not seen it in the area. There are very few people who do what I do in the area.”
And even with a modest price range — $85 to $300 — he says there is no way he could survive by selling art.
As noted, Hantman is currently showing at the Straube Center, 108 West Franklin Avenue, Pennington. The exhibition, “Exploration of Art,” also features work by Linda Barton, Judy Tyndall, and Ilene Dube and is on view through January 1. There is a free opening reception, Friday, November 10, 5 to 7 p.m. For more information on the Straube Center, visit www.straubecenter.com.
Artist Barry Hantman pictured in his Ewing home, which houses his collection of outsider art, glass pieces and furniture.,
