By Hayley Camacho

For artist Daniel Hauben the question, ‘Why do you paint the Bronx?’ can be answered with a similar question, ‘Why not paint the Bronx?’  “I live here,” he said. “Just as Monet painted his environment that happened to be Giverny and the beautiful gardens, my environment is the Bronx. It’s got plenty of possibilities.”  

Fifty-six year old Hauben has lived in the Bronx most of his life, using the borough as his muse for nearly a generation. His skill in portraying the Bronx’s different faces has led to solo exhibitions at the New York Historical Society, the Library of Congress, and galleries in Manhattan, Germany and Austria.

And as winter’s rage begins to thaw, Bronxites can expect to several exhibitions featuring new views of life and diversity of the borough from the eyes of Hauben.  The original Bronx Vortex can be viewed at Andrew Freedman Home at 1125 Grand Concourse from March 14th through April 5th, with a public reception scheduled for March 21. Expanding Views: The Art of Daniel Hauben will feature many of his largest works which have never been exhibited including Urban Idyll, a 6-panel, 20-foot panorama with a self -portrait and the 9-foot high The Fifth Crusade. 

Meantime, Bronx Works will be on view at the office of Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz at 851 Grand Concourse throughout 2014 as part of the Bronx centennial celebration. The exhibit includes a full-scale reproduction on canvas of his 5-panel, 17-foot Bronx Vortex, paying homage to Fordham Road and Grand Concourse, along with other works. 

In April, fans can look forward to his exhibition, Urban Oasis: 30 years of Painting Bronx Parks at Poe Park Visitor Center from April 26^th through May 30^th.

Creative Process
His oil paint and chalk pastel paintings have a light, airy quality and depict slices of life from the Bronx–people enjoying a sunny afternoon in a neighborhood park, an annoyed vendor selling his wares on a busy street staring directly at the painter, the Manhattan skyline as seen from the middle of the Burnside Avenue elevated train platform.

His proudest achievement has been the installation of 22 paintings at the new North Hall and Library on the Campus of Bronx Community College in October of 2012. The 16-inch tall, 48-inch wide friezes encircle the balcony of the main reading room.  They depict vistas of the campus and surrounding neighborhood, aptly mirroring the title of the installation, A Sense of Place.  Outside the entrance to the library, two 10-foot murals greet visitors.

To Hauben, his paintings in the library are like windows into the nearby environment that contrast with the rigidity of the space.  “How many artists have a permanent installation of their work in such a magnificent setting,” he said.    “It exceeded my expectation of what it would be like. I’m happy with the setup and know that they’ll be taken care of. ”

Hauben mixes all his paints in his Riverdale studio, instead of on location.  He says it makes it easier to concentrate with curious Bronxites looking on. “I’ve actually gotten paint on people,” he said laughing. “I’ve gone to make the next stroke and someone is there.  I’m putting it on their back.”

He also hosts Art and About on BronxNet channel 67, featuring his creative process as he crafts his works on location. At the Arthur Avenue Retail Market, amidst colorful fruit stands and stalls of Italian cheeses and meats, he chats with customers and business owners and incorporates the vibrancy of the iconic location into a new work.

Roots in The Bronx
The former Hillside Homes apartment complex in Williamsbridge was his home until he was nine. “Tough kids started coming to my school,” he said. “I started getting beat up.” His older brother began having trouble with gangs at school. After his mother found drug syringes on the roof, his parents decided to move to a Kingsbridge apartment Hauben lives in today with his wife.

“It was like a migration,” he recalled. “When we moved, I had three sets of aunts and uncles move into the same building as well as several neighbors.”

It was the early 1960s and Hauben was the baby in a family of five children, so his parents relaxed and indulged his creativity. “My older siblings were very smart and had fulfilled my parents’ need to have successful children.  My siblings would tell my parents to let me do my thing.”

His parents allowed him to paint a mural on the bedroom wall he shared with his brother, Eddie.  They would spend hours drawing dinosaurs on the large rolls of paper his father would bring home from his job at his brother’s electronics company.  He would pester Eddie for art lessons.

Hauben attended the High School of Music and Art (which became LaGuardia High School) for a year and then dropped out.  “One day I got a call from Eddie in Bangkok, “ he said. Eddie and his fiancé were traveling around the world. “‘If you still want to meet up with us, we’ll be in Katmandu by such a date,’”  he recalled his brother saying. “Wait a minute let me get a pencil, “ he responded. “How do you spell that?” He joined them for four months.

He came back home and took on a variety of jobs and obtained his GED the year before he would have   graduated.  “I was good at taking tests so I did civil services jobs and wound up at the Bronx General Post Office and worked the night shift on the sorting machines for a year and a half.”

By then, Eddie was recently married with a three month old son and living in a Boston commune.  His brother “took pity” and invited him to live with his new family. He helped Eddie run a day care center and began taking studio classes at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and studying Kung Fu. “I was living with a bunch of people,” he said. “It was inexpensive and I had savings from the post office. It helped me focus on what was of interest to me.

Three years later, he came back to the Bronx and was living with his recently retired parents. He applied to the School of Visual Arts and was awarded a full scholarship. Hauben said Reagan era cuts in federal expenditures for arts programs made it difficult for him to complete his education as more of his scholarship was cut each year.  He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1984.

“I certainly wasn’t traditional,” he said of his education and career path.  “My approach has evolved through the efforts to do the different kinds of work I attempted to do.”

admin

Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.