What drives Cotati artist Robert Hudson to tirelessly comb through salvage and scrap yards from Berkeley to Santa Rosa and take a sledgehammer to chunks of cast iron?
Well, a playful sense of discovery is key. That’s clear as the 77-year-old points out an almost imperceptible detail on “Dog,” his sculpture of steel, cast iron, acrylic, epoxy and found objects, on exhibit in “Robert Hudson: Recent Sculpture and Drawings” at Brian Gross Fine Art.
“That’s just an eyebolt stuck into this old magnet shape, but I love these little triangles outlined here,” says the soft-spoken Hudson, dapper in a sport jacket and architectural specs. He gestures to the stark, streamlined steel protrusion jutting out over curvy architectural scrolls painted in jaunty bright red and gold, and a cast-iron Boston terrier-shaped doorstop splashed with primary colors. “See there, those things.”
There’s also a chorus line of teensy triangles where the screw’s ridges hit the flat surface.
“I never thought of those triangles being there till I did this,” Hudson says, punctuating the revelation with a chuckle.
Sculpture may have made a return in recent years, judging from its revival among many young artists, but Hudson won’t speak to that. The Salt Lake City native has been doing his own thing for years, since receiving his bachelor’s and master’s of fine arts from the San Francisco Art Institute and being acknowledged as part of Northern California’s Funk art movement.
He’s also been recognized with National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim fellowships and last year the Lee Krasner Award for lifetime artistic achievement.
“I’m out there, ready to find out some more information, putting weird things together and just taking different approaches. I like to be open for those kinds of changes,” says Hudson, who for four decades has been working out of a barn and concrete studio outfitted with an overhead crane on a former chicken ranch.
The work, which Hudson describes as “just another stone in the path,” continues in the current show with wildly colorful, fanciful assemblages and energetically worked and collaged drawings.
Art historian Peter Selz put Funk art on the national stage when he assembled a show of Funk artists at the University Art Museum at UC Berkeley in 1967. By e-mail, he connects Hudson’s work to the Cubists: “Outstanding in the current show is ‘Frame of Mind,’ a masterful work in which brightly painted interconnected cylindrical stems are boldly contained in their metal frame — a work of exuberant vitality.”
For about a year, Hudson worked on the 87-by-51-by-49-inch “Frame of Mind,” creating a fascinating tangle of welded steel, enameled cast-iron basin fragments and objects like a dangling tintype of two proper pink-cheeked Victorians.
“The thing with this material is you can smash it or cut it in half or turn the top over,” he explains. “That’s the most fun part about it. It’s dealing with the unknown. I’ll pick up something and then, ‘Now what?’”
Kimberly Chun is an East Bay freelance writer.
Robert Hudson: Recent Sculpture and Drawings: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. Through Jan. 2. Brian Gross Fine Art, 248 Utah St., S.F. (415) 788-1050. www.briangrossfineart.com.