The spacious studio loft in Red Hook, Brooklyn where Kate Augenblick '79 paints her colorful abstract canvases overlooks New York Harbor; on a crisp September morning one can see tugs and barges floating by and lower Manhattan looming just beyond.
It's an appropriate point of view for an artist who in her own words, is "out of the loop" of the New York art scene. All over SoHo, frenzied galleries are mailing out flurries of announcements for fall openings, but across the river Augenblick, who represents herself, has been showing her work to clients and closing her own deals at a determined pace that never slackens.
"I'm out of the loop by choice," she states matter-of-factly. "The [gallery scene] is fickle and deceitful. I'm making art that's not part of a trend, art that will be around for a long time."
As a free agent, Augenblick balances her time spent in the studio, where she crafts vibrant canvases of dynamic textures and rhythms, with time spent in front of her computer, updating accession databases she created herself. Bypassing the galleries by representing herself and her husband, the painter Loren Munk, she has scored an impressive list of sales. One of Munk's paintings now hangs in the home of Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel.
Augenblick gives some credit to her years at Dartmouth for her current success.
"It taught me to be a people-person, to network," she said. "There is an old boys' network [of alumns], and I'm part of it." On the other hand, she maintains that she graduated "without a single marketable skill," and learned how to deal art on the job at Madison Avenue galleries.
She had to relearn painting, as well.
"You spend about five years unlearning all the rules they taught you in school. There are no rules. Dartmouth [at the time] had a strong prejudice toward realism, and when I tried to be inventive, to see things another way, I wasn't taken seriously."
In fact, Augenblick had several scathing anecdotes handy about an ex-studio art professor whom she declined to name.
"The painting studio used to be in the top floor of Rosegarten Hall, and it was painted off-white or grey. Well, this professor, at the beginning of the term, refused to teach in it until it was painted white. I and another student ended up painting it before the class could begin. If this were to happen now, someone would sue."
Despite the somewhat hostile atmosphere and lack of resources--the Hood Museum didn't exist, and Augenblick recalls having to order art supplies for the department herself--her passion with painting flowered.
"My last few months of school, I would just go out into the woods and draw for hours," she said.
But time and psychic space now seem to be at a premium, as Augenblick manages two careers and raises two children, Frederick, 7, and Maxfield, 4. Perhaps that's why as the art world anticipates the start of the fall season, Augenblick is simply grateful that her kids will be back in school.
"I've done a lot of balancing, between being a mother and being an artist," she said. And as her career entered a lull as she devoted her time to her sons, her husband's seemed to take off like a rocket.
Loren Munk, whom she met at the Art Students' League in the years after her graduation, is about to leave for Brazil and Paraguay, for a business/fishing trip with an important patron. His work could hardly differ more from Augenblick's: hers is abstract, his is Cubist. Hers is about color, his has a decided sociological bent with its imagery and accompanying texts. His canvasses dominate the entrance of their 3600 square-foot studio, hers occupy the rear.
Asked if competition was ever an issue between the two, Augenblick replied, "What's good for Loren is good for me. I couldn't be more ecstatic about his success." Of course, each time clients from Europe and the Pacific Rim journey to Brooklyn to see Munk's work, they can't help but notice Augenblick's as well.
By early afternoon, Maxfield has a doctor's appointment in Manhattan; Augenblick prevails upon her interviewer to give her a ride to the day care center to pick him up, then drop them both at the subway station. Interspersed with her directives that lead through the maze of one-way, cobblestoned streets are Augenblick's comments about her recent trip to Yellowstone National Park, particularly the colors of the sunset.
"There were some absolutely fantastic colors, purples and blues that if you described to someone, they wouldn't believe a sunset could look like that. But there they were... I'm definitely going to work them into my next project."
So with fantastic hues in her head and her son by the hand, Augenblick descended into the subway, walking it seemed a line between two worlds.
