This series highlights working artists currently on staff at the Frye Art Museum. The Frye has a wealth of talented Seattle-based artists working under its roof in many different capacities, each with their own dedicated arts practice outside of their work at the museum. Facilitated and written by Alexis L. Silva, Curatorial Assistant, this series is meant to highlight and celebrate these individuals, showcasing their amazing work and arts practices.
Photo: Alexis Silva
By Alexis L. Silva
On the corner of 8th Avenue and Spring Street near downtown Seattle, only about a 5-minute walk from the Frye, sits a 1928 Gothic style apartment building. Its façade is alluring, while the other parts of the exterior can be quite off-putting. The people who reside in the building are intriguing, each clearly having walked a different path of life from the other. I also reside in this building, and it has been anything but peaceful. Water shut offs, leaks, elevators breaking down, someone screaming down the hallway at 3 am. But hey, it’s home and we make the most of it.
You ride the elevator up and find yourself in a damp hallway with muddled red carpet. Different sounds come from behind each closed door, reminding you that life is present in each space. Hidden away in one of the hallways is Kurt Burghardt’s art studio and living space. The walls are covered in quotes and drawings from friends who have come into the space. A lone cat scurries across the living room floor as Kurt paints ferociously in the corner. The space is eclectic, vibrant, and full of surprises.
Along with Kurt’s studio practice, they also work as a Security Officer at the Frye, where they monitor the museum’s exhibition galleries to maintain the safety of patrons, staff, and artwork. I sat down with Kurt to talk about their practice, their influences, and how they’ve navigated their way through the Seattle arts community. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell us about your background and your practice. Are you from Seattle or did you move here? Who is Kurt?
I am from San Antonio, Texas, originally. I moved to Florida for college and received my Bachelors in English and my minor in Creative Writing. I moved up here about 5 years ago. I came to visit Seattle when I was 14 and there was something about this city that just called to me. In the book Jazz, Toni Morrison talks about how when she walks through New York, the streets have a feeling and a rhythm to them. You can feel it in your toes and all through your body, and I felt that way when I came here for the first time. I used my English degree to get into teaching here first, and then COVID hit and I lost that job. I did a string of other jobs in Parks and Recreation, and then I was at Amazon. Eventually I realized I didn’t want to work any of those jobs. I had worked as a Security Guard at an art museum before—you are on your feet a lot, but it pays the bills, and I did not want to do anything labor intensive. I know [the role of a Security Guard] is very important, and I knew I needed a change in the path of my career. I was going to be a professor of Post-Modern Literature, and then I was like, “I want to be a painter, I want to be an artist.” It was an existential thing for me at that point.
My art career started with writing; I was a writer first. I really enjoyed it, but there was something lacking about it because there wasn’t a visual aspect to it. One day I decided to go to the Dallas Art Museum. I saw a whole exhibit on Jackson Pollock. This is when I began to experience Stendhal Syndrome, which is something that can occur in people when they are viewing a work of art. They are so moved by the piece that it could cause them to faint, or cry. For me, I started to cry, but then I was paralyzed in front of this piece called Convergence, in which he uses primary colors along with black splatter. It was just so massive. I sat in front of it and I just felt, “I get it, I get art.” Jackson Pollock has been one of my biggest influences and my early works were mild imitations of his work. I have since moved into more Surrealist influences. After that, I painted for about 3 or 4 years. I later stopped for three years, feeling cut off from my artistic energies. I got commissioned to do a piece and didn’t do it for 3 years. Finally, I decided to do it and haven’t stopped painting ever since.
You use a lot of mixed media in your work. Can you talk about how you choose your materials?
It started with acrylic but then I had such an adverse reaction to acrylic itself. I actually appreciate people who use it well. It just goes to show that they actually understand how to use the medium. After acrylic, it kind of spiraled to oil and then eventually I just started adding other materials. The real push for me to use other materials was out of necessity, due to my financial situation. It doesn’t look like it by all my supplies, but most of this has been donated to me. The only things I've bought are probably spray paint and oil paint. Most of these actually came from the Frye [exhibition department] when they were getting rid of a bunch of paints and materials.
Now the story about the walls of my apartment. It started off with the quote, “This is where it begins” up on the wall. It was from a movie that I saw called The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle. It’s a Seattle indie Dada movie and when it was created, I saw that there was this one character that wrote on the walls, and I had always wanted to do that. Now everyone who comes over, I invite them to write on the walls. There’s an ethos in the Punk world of DIY of just finding what you can and using it. I don’t want to be limited as an artist by the medium in which I create. At the same time, out of necessity, [those of us in] punk culture had to make things for ourselves or find other things to use for art purposes. Clothing for instance—I use a lot of floss when I sew. It’s about finding what resources work and what sticks. I also just enjoy using different things because it feels different. I love using latex paint because it’s very smooth and it splatters really well, and it drips, whereas with oil paint you have to do a lot to get it to drip and I don’t have the time to sit there and mix it with every other thing in the world.
The Punk scene and Punk culture influence your practice, your life, your identity. Can you talk to me about how this all comes together to influence your work?
Punk isn’t necessarily music or a subculture—it’s an energy. It’s a way of being and existing with your own emotions that are aligned with a very aggressive, but also very caring sensibility. A lot of it is anger: I am mad. I'm mad about everything in this world. It is so depressing to see that if I leave Washington state, even though I am masc [masculine] presenting, if I were to wear a dress anywhere that isn’t a big city—even in some big cities like Nashville—I could be killed, I can be shot, I can be yelled at. I am no stranger to abuse, but Punk is a way of saying “F you” to these thoughts and beliefs in this society that wants to destroy everyone who doesn’t fall under the status quo. Punk music particularly speaks to how angry I feel in my soul. There’s also an added edge to it: it’s about caring about this world. Punks may seem nihilistic, but they don’t want the world to burn, unless it's burned for the better. It’s to burn so we can have regrowth. I’ve also experienced a lot of stuff in my life that just made me feel sad to exist, and the only way I could feel my life moving forward is through the anger that I’ve experienced from the different traumas of myself and my friends. Punk really helps with that, plus I enjoy the music. Some of the shows I’ve gone to remind me of performance art. Punk is particularly about energy, and the performance adds on to the energy you can feel at a show.
Photo: Alexis Silva
Walk me through your practice, how do you start?
It is kind of esoteric in a way; it is about getting into the realm of the metastatic self where, when I am painting, I am sublimating myself. I am the engine, and the world zeitgeist is the conductor. I am just moving my hands, but I am guided in a spiritual context or spiritual way when I make work. It’s an understanding of a collective unconsciousness that I am tapping into and leaving myself out of. [Current exhibiting artist] Katherine Bradford mentions how she seeks to not have herself as a person connected to her own emotional self. Last night, I was extremely angry. I told myself, “Okay, you’re going to paint.” But then I thought, “No; you’re going to be painting out a sense of your own anger,” which would mean the painting would be mine, instead of belonging to the world. I am very grounded, and I think that is why my English degree is valuable to me, because it allows me to look at art in an academic and philosophical way. I don’t have any formal art training; I picked this up on my own and did whatever I wanted. There is an understanding of what I was feeling when I was writing, things would just come out without me really having the words to describe what was happening. I didn’t have to think about these words, the words were being written by this collective unconsciousness that I was experiencing. When I paint, I don’t think about it, I just do it.
There is the mindset in the art world that art is about capitalism. Once you make it in the art world, you are selling both yourself and your work. I have a philosophy that art is meant for everybody; it is meant for the people. We live in a scary world and art is a transmission of ideas. There is a way for art to highlight issues, kind of like how comedians do it. The traditional idea of a comedian or a jester in particular was to tell the king his follies in a funny way, so the king isn’t necessarily offended. Art is a way to do that as well, but through beauty, or through torture, whatever it may be. It is a process of telling the world and people and sharing with the people what they are living through and to make them feel what it is like to live in the world we are in. So many people see art as an escape, a way to just look at something happy and not think about the bad things in the world. Because of the dire nature of the world that we live in, I cannot do that. I have a hard time appreciating art that isn’t saying something. Selling art for me, it feels odd. Once I start to sell art, it becomes a part of a market that is about glorifying a generic baseline of aesthetics, not about pointing out what’s wrong or just speaking to the soul of the world and the people who look at it. I want my work to be seen, I don’t want it to be sold. I don’t want my work to be viewed as a product, I want it to be viewed in general. If I really sell you something, I just ask for a case of beer and pizza.
Tell us about your vision for the future of the Seattle arts community.
I want artists to use their work to change the world that we are in. I fall in line with Lenin when he talks about art as propaganda, in that I want artists to create work that pushes the boundaries of the people looking at it. That way, when people see the work, it pushes them to enact change. Plato said a poet should be a politician because they don’t understand politics. I am a painter, I can help in revolutionary efforts and changing the world that we are in. But my job is to get people to feel the change that needs to happen. It’s rough when I go to art walks and I see art that doesn’t speak to anything, it’s just aesthetic. Gone are the days of ‘art for art’s sake.’ We are not in that anymore; we can’t be in that anymore. It’s existential. To make art for art’s sake is to avoid what is actually happening. I want more artists to utilize their abilities, regardless of who they are, to point to the problems in a way that only their art can do. A lot of artists seem to be making work in a capitalist means of production. It’s not about making money anymore, that’s just feeding the system that seeks to destroy people like you and me. I don’t want to brand myself; I am who I am and if you don’t like that, I don’t care. My question is, do you like the art? But no one cares about the art. People are concerned with who made it. And it’s tragic because when they only care about the artist, they care about a false image of a person, a pastiche of the person. Fame and branding can sometimes get rid of who you are genuinely.
I know we spoke a lot about branding and capitalism, but I would still like folks to keep their finger on the pulse of your practice. Where can we find your work? (Socials, website, upcoming or on-view shows, etc.)
I am planning a DIY show in the summer so look out for that. You can find my work on Instagram at @artbykurtdahurt.
