Memorial to honor South Bend artist whose work reached a global audience
SOUTH BEND — Friends will host a memorial and exhibit Sunday for a local artist, Scott Hatt, who’d opened The Spurious Fugitive art gallery in downtown from 2005 to 2008 and whose prolific work in collage art led him to collaborate with artists across the globe.
Hatt died in late October after complications from cardiac problems. He was 64.
The memorial program will open at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Monroe Street Studios, 107 W. Monroe St., where several pieces of Hatt’s art will be on display.
The Spurious Fugitive, which was at 114 W. Colfax Ave., hosted a total of 44 monthly shows, drawing art locally and from 16 states and two European countries. Many of these featured the work of people that Hatt considered cutting edge post-modern artists, according to close friend David Barton, who’s organizing the memorial with his wife, Evie.
"That was a tremendously brave thing to do," South Bend artist Alan Larkin said, noting how South Bend didn't have full-blown art galleries or a market for them at the time.
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The gallery was also unique in the area because it often featured pieces that were “challenging” for viewers to look at because they weren’t the usual, Barton said — if there were portraits, they were askew.
Larkin, a realist painter and print maker who's retired after 40 years as art professor at IU South Bend, said he had a few exhibits at the gallery where his works always sold well. He'd noticed how "exceptionally talented" Hatt was in the 1980s when Hatt came to to IUSB to add silk screening to his established art skills.
“The main reason was to exhibit and sell art that wasn’t being seen in this area,” Hatt had told The Tribune about his gallery, which closed after the Great Recession caused art sales to plummet.
When it closed, he said: "If people miss it, maybe they can take that energy and support the folks who are still here. I realized this was a total niche. I knew that, but I think I stayed true to the vision, and a lot of work got sold and placed."
Barton, a retired IUSB music professor, had improvised about 100 pieces of electronic music as he performed at opening receptions for the gallery’s shows.
Likewise, Hatt taught fine arts and graphic design at IUSB from 1998 to 2003.
But along with his own acrylic painting, Hatt also founded an online collage art group. Two or three of the artists would partner up, with one of them gathering postcard-sized photos or scraps of art from old printed material, then arranging the pieces on a canvas and shipping it off to another artist to complete. Barton said Hatt had collaborated on collages with artists in Ireland, Austria, New York, Montana and Japan, among others.
“Scott’s output as a collage artist was staggering,” Evie Barton said.
Some of the collages can be viewed on Instagram at scott_hatt, and some will be displayed at the memorial.
At Sunday’s memorial, guests are encouraged to bring a folding chair, a story about Hatt and a snack to share. Everyone is asked to wear masks since immuno-compromised people will attend.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: South Bend Memorial to honor artist, Spurious Fugitive's Scott Hatt
