Arts
A Woman of Many Firsts: Janis Ian
A Portrait of the Artist
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A
Portrait of the Artist Pittsford's Bob Hooker Paints Abstract with Texture |
by Bob Wolff
Some
come to Vermont for the mountains or snow, others for the villages, summers,
and some for the quiet. Having been here year-round for two and a half
years, I stay here mostly for the people whose look or demeanor seems
more often than not to cover rich, unique interests and talents. Bob Hooker
of Pittsford, Vermont is a good example. He is an eleventh-generation
Vermonter. Beyond that he is impossible to define in a few words.
I visited Bob Hooker because he is not
only an IBM microchip factory worker but an artist. He has had two shows,
the latest of which recently closed at the Maclure Library in Pittsford.
Having missed the exhibition, I wanted to see his work and meet the Vermont
artist. Bob is what one could call a primitive abstract impressionist
– rare in any state, ultra rare in a state where realistic mountain,
farm, and house painters abound – but completely rational given
how Bob got to be the artist he is. He says, "Painting is the world
inside a frame; I love to see what people can do with that and what I
can do with that."
Bob lives with his husband, Greg Sharrow,
in a building that started its life as a factory in another location in
the 1830s. Hooker represents the third generation of his family to live
in what is now a home woven with late 19th century machine-shop belt drives,
joists singed in the building's previous fires, and a few belt-driven
tools and wonderful artifacts representing many times and places. Ritual
and theatre masks hang next to 1950s wood, plastic and metal table lamps.
A Tibetan prayer gong is adjacent to a string sculpture. Bob explained
that only since he and Greg have lived here did anyone occupy the ground
floor. Before that his grandmother lived upstairs, and the ground floor
was a first a blacksmith shop, then a combination blacksmith and car mechanic's
shop. It was finally a car mechanic's garage, an evolution that parallels
the history of transportation in America.
The presence of all these objects is not
surprising because Bob, currently in his twenty-eighth year at IBM, is
the descendent of blacksmiths and mechanics, and Greg is the Director
of Education at Vermont Folk life Center. The mixture of old machines,
pets of several phyla, and lighting fixtures of different places and times
seems to fit into the world of blacksmith descendants and folk-interested
gay men. I should know, as the grandson of a blacksmith, lover of string
band music from different countries, and collector of the odd and interesting.
No Grandma Moses houses and figures in
Bob's art. He is into bold abstract images sometimes created with paint,
other times with collage – including attachment of 3-D objects.
Sometimes these objects are recycled materials found in parking lots and
other public places needing tidying up. His mother-in-law, Marjorie Sharrow
of Rutland, has been an artist of merit in her own right for almost 70
years. She has attempted to teach him some aspects of figurative if not
realistic painting. He declined. She did not think people would be interested
in Hooker's abstractions. But instead, as he gained favor among lovers
of his abstract works, she has tested the abstract waters herself.
Bob Hooker, 53, has been painting since
he was 12, when his mother started him on paint-by-numbers. This process
led him away from drawing. Instead of the natural and formal art-training
approach of moving through drawing to painting, Bob sees textures, shapes
and colors that he wants to express, takes notes, and makes little sketches
in a notebook. Then later, in his studio (once one of
his daughter's bedrooms) he develops these preliminary materials into
paintings. Sometimes he works on a painting for months, doing a bit to
it every once in a while until he is satisfied.
"I love texture, shape and colors,"
he says. "So I put that into my work and love what I am doing, and
I love it when others love it too. I start from an idea from the world
around me. I take notes in other people's homes, at work, and outside.
Then as I work the shape, texture or color goes where it wants to go."
Asked about other painters who have influenced
him, Bob mentions Helen Frankenthaler, Edward Betts, Picasso, and Salvador
Dali. Hooker's first exhibition was at the Brownell Library in Essex Junction
while he was working there as a janitor; the library liked the idea of
their janitor as artist. The recent show at the Maclure Library in Pittsford
included 39 paintings and collages, representing work over the years.
Although sometimes Bob paints several paintings that develop a single
theme, most of his paintings follow their own separate paths. Bob Hooker
and Greg Sharrow had their Civil Union on September 9, 2001. Bob was previously
married for 25 years, Greg 20 years. They have four daughters ages 16
through 25.
Bob Wolff makes things of clay, fibers, and paints in watercolor and
acrylics. He also designs scenery and lighting for theatre productions
in Vermont and is providing theatre design, acoustics and consulting services
for several performing arts facility projects.