Jud Hartmann sculptor

Jud Hartmann, sculptor

“Burn like the sun and have the power of storms”

by Joyce Marcel

When the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano reached the new world in 1524, he wrote to the King of France about the Indians he met:

“These people are the most beautiful and have the most civil customs that we have found on this voyage. They are taller than we are; they are a bronze color, some tending more toward whiteness, others to a tawny color; the face is clear-cut; the hair is long and black, and they take great pains to decorate it; the eyes are black and alert, and their manner is sweet and gentle, very much like the manner of the ancients…. Their women are just as shapely and beautiful; very gracious, of attractive manner and pleasant appearance…”

As settlers followed explorers, there was much more written description of the Northeastern Woodland tribes. But almost no visual representations.

Sculptor Jud Hartmann, 63, who has galleries and studios in Grafton, Vermont and Blue Hill, Maine, is on a spiritual quest to capture the likenesses of these beautiful people.

His dramatic, elegant and somewhat eerily lifelike bronzes depict Iroquois and Algonquin Indians fighting, playing lacrosse (they invented the game), hunting, fishing for salmon and riding on the water.

So far, Hartmann has produced more than 50 Native American bronze sculptures in his The Woodland Tribes of the Northeast series. Because of the emphasis on Western Indians, his series represents the first and by far the most comprehensive exploration of eastern Native American peoples ever undertaken in bronze or any other medium.

And it has certainly been one of the most successful. Hartmann says his sculptures have been sold in 45 of the 51 states and are in 15 foreign countries.

“It was a dubious prospect when I started,” Hartmann said. “Would anyone have an interest in this? There was no way of knowing, because nobody had ever done this before. Fortunately, in 1983, three things happened to make it work. I discovered bronze, I opened the gallery in Grafton and I reconnected with the Indians. I knew right away this was what I was meant to do. Based on the reactions of people who come into the galleries, I think I’m doing OK.”

Hartmann was fascinated with Indians as a child. Then he moved on. His degree from Hobart College was in American history. He never studied art. He only discovered that he was a sculptor when he was 22 and working as a lifeguard on the island of St. Croix.

“I wanted to paint, but there wasn’t an art supply store on the island,” Hartmann said. “It turned out to be a blessing. I met a guy who was a furniture maker. He made beautiful tables out of mahogany and other woods. I bought a piece of mahogany from him, borrowed a mallet and two carving tools, and the next day I started woodcarving. I didn’t have any idea what I was doing. More important, I didn’t have any expectations. I hit the chisel with the mallet and something right in my core went ‘Wow! This feels terrific!’ Before that first day was over, I knew I was supposed to be a sculptor.”

Ten years later, he learned that sculpting was in his blood.

“I was having a conversation with my maternal grandmother,” Hartmann said. “She was 92 then. She’d been born on a farm in Flatbush, Brooklyn, during the blizzard of 1888. And she told me, for the very first time, that her grandfather was a marble sculptor. And I instantly remembered the first time I struck the chisel with the mallet. It’s in the genes. I was destined to be a sculptor. And I seemed to know how to do it. It was just intuitive.”

Hartmann moved to Grafton in 1976. Back then he was working in marble. Then the stone became more expensive and difficult to find. Faced with a commission, he suggested that he cast it in bronze. His patron agreed.

“I hung up the phone and gulped,” Hartmann said. “What do I do now? But people led me to a foundry in New York and that’s how I got started. Very quickly, the medium won me over. First, you can do multiples. Here was a possibility of actually making a living as a sculptor. And from an artistic standpoint, marble and wood and stone are limiting by their very nature. In bronze there is no limitation. In 30 years of working in this medium, I’m always testing the limits of what’s possible. And so far, the only limitation is in my mind.”

Most of Hartmann’s time is spent doing research.

“The material is inexhaustible,” Hartmann said. “Most people don’t even know it exists, but it’s staggering how much there is. One source is the collected writing of the French Jesuits. Their first mission was in 1611. They were all over the Northeast and kept detailed accounts describing these people. They often went to far-flung places. They often had no paper and no ink. Their originals were written on birch bark with ink made of soot mixed with water. Some of those still exist in France.”

In the Jesuits’ collected writings, which fill 73 volumes, there is only one drawing—and it’s a landscape. So the portraits come from written descriptions like Verrazzano’s and Hartmann’s own imagination.

“As I’m working, the subject creates itself,” he said.Hartmann’s motto is as dramatic as his sculptures: “Burn like the sun and have the power of storms.”

“Too often, art ends up being pretty pictures and kind of innocuous,” he said. “I want something powerful, something that stays with people. Ultimately the greatest challenge, beyond getting the anatomy and the costuming, is to capture the soul and bring the subject to life. That quality is what sticks with people and what sticks with me.”