It’s often said that stripes and plaids don’t mix, but artist Kay Hartung thinks they can. In her artwork, now on display at the Acton Memorial Library until the end of April, she explores how colors and patterns interact. Entitled “Layers,” the exhibit features monotypes, one-of-a-kind prints.
Hartung finds relationships among colors, patterns, and shapes fascinating. “There are things you discover and interactions that happen that you don’t expect,” she says.
A native of Brooklyn, New York, Hartung became interested in art around age 7. Her parents were supportive and encouraged lessons in drawing and painting as well as trips to art museums and galleries. At summer camp, she was introduced to silkscreen printing. By doubling up on English courses, she was able to graduate six months early from high school. During that free time before college, she was a full-time sculpture student at the Brooklyn Museum.
A teacher at the museum urged her to continue her education at the Philadelphia College of Art, which she did. Freshman year, she took a printmaking class but decided it was “too flat for me.” Then she looked into the fibers department, where the art could be 2-D or 3-D and have texture. “The fibers department ,” she says, “was a place where I could pursue my interest in sculptural things but also in flat things with patterns. I felt it would satisfy me.”
After receiving her BFA as a fibers major, she went to Syracuse University and earned an MFA in “interlocking structures” (which Hartung laughingly explains is that school’s way of saying fibers). While in graduate school, she made sculptural pieces that involved weaving nontraditional materials, such as rubber and resin-treated rope. She then went on to teach in the art department of Bradford College for twenty years.
Her current exhibit at the library is an outgrowth of her love of textiles and patterns. The artworks are monotypes—prints that cannot be reproduced, since no etching plate or screen is involved in making them. These unique works are created with encaustic paint, also known as hot wax paint. This centuries-old medium is composed of beeswax and pine resin to which colored pigments are added.
Prints are made on an aluminum plate that is heated by 100-watt lightbulbs in a box below. The encaustic, which is shaped like a bar of soap, is put on the metal plate. As it turns to liquid, the artist can brush the paint and use various tools to make comb-like lines or swirling designs.
After Hartung puts a layer of encaustic down on the metal plate, she draws into it. Then she lays across a sheet of paper and “pulls” a print. She may reject prints that have too much paint or are smudged. “I may pull fifty prints before I pull one I really like and want to work on further,” says Hartung. “I have stacks of papers that are printed, but I haven’t gone to the next step of adding pastel or drawing on the prints.”
Soft pastels are used with stencils to add more patterns to the prints. After being applied with sponges, the pastels are lightly fused into the paint with a heat gun.
The “Layers” series at the library came about through unfortunate circumstances. Hartung lost her studio of twenty-two years when ArtSpace in Maynard closed its location in a former school. She found a temporary studio but could no longer do encaustic painting because the space lacked the required ventilation. However, she had many papers she’d already printed and was able to add pastels and create the artwork now on display.
Since then she has continued to work, with a vent, in the basement of her home and outside in the summer. Her latest encaustic works are wood panels cut in whimsical shapes painted in highly textured, bright colors. Last November, she had a show featuring this new work at the Fountain Street Gallery in SoWa in Boston. (Unfortunately, this gallery, of which Hartung had been a member for ten years, closed in March.) One of these pieces —“Geocolor 9”—also received a 2024 Members Prize Show Artist of the Year award from the Cambridge Art Association in February.
Despite losing her studio and gallery, Hartung still creates art. “I’m being very persistent, because this is what I love doing,” she says. “I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t do it.”
Hartung, a long-time Acton resident, lives with husband Paul, and has two grown children, Emily and Miles.
The exhibit, which lasts through April, is free and open to the public when the meeting room is not in use. Please check the library Program Calendar for availability.
Kay Hartung will demonstrate how to make an encaustic monotype at the Acton library on Sunday, April 7 from 2 to 3 p.m.
Nancy Knoblock Hunton is a volunteer writer for Acton Exchange, specializing in profiles of people who have made contributions to the community.
