Familiarly known as Chuck, Hauck moved to New Bedford from Toledo, Ohio, after graduating from high school, joining his brother Tom, who was staff architect for the Waterfront Historic Area League (WHALE). Chuck lived on County Street and found work as a carpenter in the restoration projects under way at that time.
As a teen, Hauck liked to draw, but he didn't know anybody who earned a living as an artist. "Everybody worked in the mills for Chevy or Jeep," he recalled.
In New Bedford, he enrolled at the Swain School of Design, majoring in sculpture and graduating in 1981.
His early involvement in the Second Street Art Exchange, a group gallery of mostly Swain alumni that operated in the brick building behind Freestone's from 1983 to '86. In 1990, a heritage street festival was being organized, and a temporary space was offered at 58 Spring St. for the first "Public Hanging," which Hauck helped organize. It was such a success that Gallery X was established at the address.
After five years, the gallery moved to the former First Universalist Church on William Street. "Many people said it would never work in New Bedford," Hauck observes, but now Gallery X has achieved a venerable stature as a pioneer of the downtown art scene.
Standing in his studio, Hauck explains that he begins his sculptures with a rough sketch of the figure he's creating, and then creates an armature of heavy wire. He then builds up the form using aluminum foil, plastic and other materials. A mixture of carpet adhesive, latex paint and other ingredients is laid on, and then he paints the critter with acrylic paint. A top coat of spray varnish makes them weather-resistant.
He enjoys incorporating movement into his work, he says. "I was probably ... inspired by the Whaling Museum (collections), the pie crimpers, weather vanes. I looked at folk art." Among the mobiles he has created are ones depicting Adam and Eve and the Serpent, Capt. Ahab stalking Moby-Dick, and an enormous T. Rex skeleton that roars silently in his backyard.
A mobile of goldfish sprang from his wife's desire for a fish pond in the garden. Since the couple rents, he didn't think digging a hole in the yard would be wise, so instead he created goldfish that "swim" through the air.
A sculpted fish painted with stripes might trigger a "striped bass" response in the viewer's mind, but Hauck explains, "I think for me it's easier to make imaginary fish," than to have experts counting scales, or the feathers on a bird. "I always was a cartoon sort of guy; photo realism wasn't my thing as much as caricature."
Many of Hauck's works have entered collections through his donations to fund-raising auctions, while others he has bartered with fellow artists.
Restoration of New Bedford landmarks remains very much on Hauck's mind. He is a founder and former president of Orpheum Rising Project Helpers Inc., which is working to rehabilitate the grand theater adjacent to Route 18 in the city's South End.
Hanging over the dining room mantel in the Haucks' home is a diorama that the couple made for a 2006 exhibit at New Bedford Art Museum, "Inviting Response." Inspired by a photograph from July 4, 1888, of a schooner passing through the old New Bedford swing bridge, it gives an overhead view of the harbor, the bridge, the crowded downtown and the rural Fairhaven shore of that era. It's both a historical document and an artistic concept brought to fruition, a harking back to the rich history that lured a Midwesterner to sink his roots into New Bedford soil.
Article by Joanna Weeks, Staff Writer at the New Bedford Standard Times.
As a teen, Hauck liked to draw, but he didn't know anybody who earned a living as an artist. "Everybody worked in the mills for Chevy or Jeep," he recalled.
In New Bedford, he enrolled at the Swain School of Design, majoring in sculpture and graduating in 1981.
His early involvement in the Second Street Art Exchange, a group gallery of mostly Swain alumni that operated in the brick building behind Freestone's from 1983 to '86. In 1990, a heritage street festival was being organized, and a temporary space was offered at 58 Spring St. for the first "Public Hanging," which Hauck helped organize. It was such a success that Gallery X was established at the address.
After five years, the gallery moved to the former First Universalist Church on William Street. "Many people said it would never work in New Bedford," Hauck observes, but now Gallery X has achieved a venerable stature as a pioneer of the downtown art scene.
Standing in his studio, Hauck explains that he begins his sculptures with a rough sketch of the figure he's creating, and then creates an armature of heavy wire. He then builds up the form using aluminum foil, plastic and other materials. A mixture of carpet adhesive, latex paint and other ingredients is laid on, and then he paints the critter with acrylic paint. A top coat of spray varnish makes them weather-resistant.
He enjoys incorporating movement into his work, he says. "I was probably ... inspired by the Whaling Museum (collections), the pie crimpers, weather vanes. I looked at folk art." Among the mobiles he has created are ones depicting Adam and Eve and the Serpent, Capt. Ahab stalking Moby-Dick, and an enormous T. Rex skeleton that roars silently in his backyard.
A mobile of goldfish sprang from his wife's desire for a fish pond in the garden. Since the couple rents, he didn't think digging a hole in the yard would be wise, so instead he created goldfish that "swim" through the air.
A sculpted fish painted with stripes might trigger a "striped bass" response in the viewer's mind, but Hauck explains, "I think for me it's easier to make imaginary fish," than to have experts counting scales, or the feathers on a bird. "I always was a cartoon sort of guy; photo realism wasn't my thing as much as caricature."
Many of Hauck's works have entered collections through his donations to fund-raising auctions, while others he has bartered with fellow artists.
Restoration of New Bedford landmarks remains very much on Hauck's mind. He is a founder and former president of Orpheum Rising Project Helpers Inc., which is working to rehabilitate the grand theater adjacent to Route 18 in the city's South End.
Hanging over the dining room mantel in the Haucks' home is a diorama that the couple made for a 2006 exhibit at New Bedford Art Museum, "Inviting Response." Inspired by a photograph from July 4, 1888, of a schooner passing through the old New Bedford swing bridge, it gives an overhead view of the harbor, the bridge, the crowded downtown and the rural Fairhaven shore of that era. It's both a historical document and an artistic concept brought to fruition, a harking back to the rich history that lured a Midwesterner to sink his roots into New Bedford soil.
Article by Joanna Weeks, Staff Writer at the New Bedford Standard Times.