Hume sculptor

Hume sculptor

shares vision

in 'Exchange'

By MARK SCOLFORO

Rappahannock Newt Staff Writer

Sculptor Frederick “Rick” Hart brings his involvement with a variety of communities to the third installment of the Ki Theatre “Exchange” series, to be held at the sculptor’s home studio at Hume, at 7:30 p.m. March 15.

First, there are communities such as those who performed restoration and renovations to the National Cathedral during the time Hart was putting up a monumental work on the west facade. And he became involved with a group of Vietnam veterans that he met through his now-famous memorial statue.

Then there’s the Rappahannock-Fauquier community, which he describes as “peppered with artists,” and of which he recently became a member.

And the artist cites membership in the world community as being important to himself and of relevance to his work.

This, the second year of Ki’s Exchange, is designed to explore the relationship between artists and their community (however they choose to define it). Mr. Hart said, “I plan to interpret it in a couple of different ways; show some slides of my work and talk about a lot of different kinds of community.”

Mr. Hart feels very strongly about what he calls the “moral obligation of artists to society—something I’ve been harping about for some time.”

The recent elevation of the issue of federal arts funding to the forefront of the national debate has a good side, he says: it has brought the questions of “what is art, who’s it for, whether it should be funded, etc.” into the lives of average Americans.

“It’s an irreconcilable error for public monies to be spent on private art,” he said, an error that the federal government has committed.

Two years ago he penned an article for the Washington Post that argued that a lot of the problems the National Endowment for the Arts is having today have been “brought on by the artists themselves.” He’s not in favor of dismantling the NEA, he said, but feels that the current scrutiny is a good thing for the long-term direction of the agency.

“I think what’s lacking in the NEA and the arts community is any sort of guiding philosophy,” he charged.

But aside from the national controversies swirling around the federal government’s art-funding policies, Mr. Hart will bring his unique experiences as an artist to this weekend’s installment of the Exchange.

His sculpture draws its subjects from what he calls “internal fables. I would be doing what I’m doing if I were here or in New York.”

Feedback from the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial statue he created has been, he said, “humbling.” Although he is not a veteran himself, creating the national monument has brought him into the community of Vietnam veterans.

“I have been really humbled by the degree to which the Vietnam Memorial statue has affected people in a positive way and the way it affects people to have it there (on the Mall),” he said.

“The response from veterans has been very touching and gratifying. It sort of puzzled me at first, because veterans took such delight in the details of the work,” which were researched at ^pngth. The details, he added, serve as an “acknowledgement of what they went through.”

Sm RICK HART, p.B-7