Robert Hite

WNYC’s Arts Press

admin — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:39:27 +0000

Sculptures sited among Hudson Valley landscapes will be seen in Robert Hite: Imagined Histories, an exhibition in the museum’s Contemporary Gallery May 21 through September 4. Hite is a sculptor, painter and photographer. A native of Virginia, he now lives and works in upstate New York. His work, always reflective of nature and of the surrounding landscape, reveals the influence of the rich Southern narrative tradition. Hite has studied and photographed rural dwellings in Central and South America, Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and the Southern United States.

From 2006 to 2010, Hite installed and photographed a series of mixed/media architectural sculptures called Imagined Histories: Hudson Valley Landscapes. The Contemporary Gallery exhibition includes a sculpture from this series and black and white photographs from the series. The exhibition is selected by Elaine Berger for the museum’s Contemporary Collectors Circle and by Museum Director Karl E. Willers, Ph.D

At the Nassau County Museum of art, sculptor and photographer Robert Hite blends architectural history and photography. Shown here: ‘Migration House,’ a piece from 2006.

The Nassau County Museum: a film about Robert Hite’s Imagined Histories

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admin — Fri, 06 May 2011 04:28:17 +0000

Press Release: Solo Exhibit

admin — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 00:53:48 +0000

Robert Hite: Imagined Histories

In the Contemporary Gallery at

The Nassau County Museum of Art

May 21, 2011 through September 4, 2011

From 2006 to 2010, Hite installed and photographed a series of mixed/media architectural sculptures “Imagined Histories” Sculptures in Hudson Valley Landscapes. The Contemporary Gallery exhibition includes a sculpture from this series and black and white photographs. The exhibition is selected by Elaine Berger for the museum’s Contemporary Collectors Circle and by Museum Director Karl E. Willers, Ph.D.

Nassau County Museum of Art is located at One Museum Drive (just off Northern Boulevard, Route 25A, two traffic lights west of Glen Cove Road) in Roslyn Harbor. Hours are 11 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Docent-led tours of the exhibition are offered at 2 p.m. each day; meet in the lobby, no reservations needed. Admission to the galleries in the Arnold & Joan Saltzman Fine Art Building is $10 for adults, $8 for seniors (62 and above) and $4 for students and children (4 to12) and includes same day admission to the Art Space for Children (Tuesday-Sunday, 12-4:30 pm). Members are admitted free. Admission to the Art Space for Children only is $5 for adults and $4 for students, children (aged 4 to 12) and seniors (aged 62 and above); children under 4 and members are free. There is a $2 parking fee on weekends (free for members). The Museum Gift Shop is open during museum hours.

Nassau County Museum of Art is chartered by New York State as a not-for-profit private educational institution and museum. A privately elected Board of Trustees is responsible for its governance. The museum is funded through income derived from admissions, parking, membership, special events, private donations and corporate sponsorships, as well as federal and state grants. Exhibitions are supported in part by generous donations of the Board of Trustees, Museum Council, Contemporary Collectors Circle, Corporate members, and other friends of the museum.

Call (516) 484-9337 for current exhibitions, events, hours and directions or log onto nassaumuseum.org.
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Media Contact: Doris Meadows, 516-609-9696 or dorismeadows@optonline.net

Press

admin — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:56:22 +0000

I will be keeping open hours / by appointment or by chance this summer . Works that will be in the Nassau County Museum will be on view in the studio until May 18th. Please feel free to contact me for a studio visit.

Crossing Boundaries: A Review

admin — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:55:44 +0000

Busy esopus sculptor Robert Hite gets installation in Austin, exhibition in NYC through June

Robert Hite, who lives in the old parsonage and works in the former Methodist Church in the riverside community of Esopus, is in the midst of a creative leap with his work. Once a painter, then a sculptor, and later a photographer of his painted sculptures in outdoor installation settings, he has recently upped the ante on what has been a successful career with the completion of a major commissioned work addressing our nation’s border-crossing controversies, based in Austin, Texas.

Crossing Safely, the new sculpture by Robert Hite installed on the grounds of St. Edward’s University in early April, commemorates the thousands of anonymous people who crossed the Mexico/US border in search of a better life. It was constructed out of 60 rusted and distressed metal sheets shipped up from a Mexican village and used to compose two nine-and-a-half-feet-by-ten-feet-by-one-foot freestanding panel depictions of shack houses placed parallel to each other, and accessible by viewers.

Hite recently reached an agreement to have the sculpture moved, in the coming week, to the grounds of the Texas capital’s Mexican-American Cultural Center in downtown Austin, near the State Capitol. Its currency is undeniable.

Simultaneously to all this, Hite is currently showing six large sculptures and nine photographs of his seemingly whimsical but ultimately dead-serious riffs on poor shacks and hovels remembered from his Virginia youth, or seen on more-recent travels around the world, at the new Susan Eley Fine Arts Gallery on the Upper West Side of New York.

An elegant man who has allowed his artwork to mature on its own, pushed only by his lifelong allegiance to the idealism of true human rights and increased equality among all peoples, Hite speaks of what he does in terms of what it can do. He wants to get people thinking about the nature of shelter and the need we all have for it; the tentative hold that we all have on what we think is stable; the beauty of decay, but also the infallibility of man’s striving for something beautiful.

He says that he has been thinking, next, of a new large work for New Orleans, dealing with the idea of race – possibly in the form of a black-and-white house sculpture: another bifurcated vision rendered with a visionary’s sense of the bittersweet frailties inherent in all beauty.

by Paul Smart Hudson Valley Times, May 13, 2010

Austin, Texas Installation

admin — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:54:38 +0000

St. Edward’s University will host artist Robert Hite April 5-18. While on campus, Hite will reveal his new sculptural work, Crossing Safely April 12 on the Main Building lawn, and a photography exhibit entitled Imagined Histories will be on display during his visit. He will also give a public lecture, The Search for Social Justice Through the Arts. His visit coincides with the Texas Association of Schools of Art conference being held on campus.

Crossing Safely is inspired by a modest shed-shaped shack in Arrazola, Oaxaca, Mexico, that Hite photographed while he was developing major work for St. Edward’s and the Kozmetsky Center. “This work honors the stories of those who have traversed the border…successfully or not…” says Hite.

Public Talk

admin — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:53:59 +0000

Public talk and installation and exhibit opens April 12th

Solo Exhibit at Susan Eley Fine Art, NY.NY April 29th -June 11th

Exhibit and installation ends June 20, 2010

The Susan Eley Gallery, is located at 47 West 90th Street. Call (212) 952-7641

or visit www.susaneleyfineart.com for further information.

Visiting Artist Texas

admin — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:53:45 +0000

Robert will be a visiting artist at St.Edwards University in Austin Texas. He will be working with students for two weeks in early April installing a sculpture on the campus and installing a exhibit and will be giving a talk during a meeting of Tasa: Texas Association of Schools of Art

Hite will present a selection of photographs from his Imagined Histories series at the St. Edward’s University Scarborough-Phillips Library. In the photographic series “Imagined Histories,” Hite resituates his architectural sculptures in outdoor settings, magnifying the effects of dislocation and displacement that is central to all his imagery.

In conjunction with these two exhibits, Hite will give a public lecture, “The Search for Social Justice Through the Arts” at 7 p.m. on Monday, April 12 in Jones Auditorium, Robert and Pearle Ragsdale Center, with a reception to follow immediately.

Hite was born in 1956 in rural Virginia, attended Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. After studying traditional ink brush painting in Malaysia, he worked as a studio assistant with Washington Color School painter Leon Berkowitz. Informed both by a rich southern narrative tradition and a closeness to natural environments, Hite’s imagery often draws upon his memories of youthful wanderings in the Virginia tidewaters.

Imagined Histories: Sculpture and Photographs

admin — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:52:47 +0000

Look for the book By Karl Emil Willers about the photographs by Robert Hite – by order or through galleries by August 15th / circa 80 pages

Robert Hite Catalog on Blurb