Welcome surprises: three iconic South Bay artists present new work at 608 North [VIDEO]

“Alabama Hills” by Robi Hutas

 The hunter

Robi Hutas has about $85 to his name. He cleans people’s couches, carpets, and mini-blinds a couple times a week in order to pay rent and eat. But this morning, Hutas woke up in the hours before the sunrise. He had his coffee, strapped on his camera, and took off. Riding his bike up and down the beach, he waits to stumble upon his next subject.

“Alabama Hills” by Robi Hutas

“I equate a photographer to a guy who takes a thirty-aught-six rifle, and he decides he’s going to go out and get a big gigantic buck somewhere. A photographer is like a hunter with a gun,” Hutas explains. “Sometimes you get the buck sometimes you don’t. You can walk all day, for days and days, even weeks; it can take forever to get exactly what you want. But when you get one, only one, it’s worth it.”

Hutas took up photography shortly after escaping his native Hungary in 1958. He has over a million negatives that he suspects will never be looked at, simply because there are just too many to go through. His greatest fame derives from the iconic panoramic shots he took at nearly every significant volleyball tournament since the early 1970s through the turn of the century. His comprehensive collection includes portraits from Hungary and Mexico, Western landscapes, wildflowers, knots on wood, the Old Redondo waterfront, panoramic images of every corner and every bridge in the Venice Canal neighborhoods, and block-by-block shots of the Strand in Hermosa Beach.

“Photography is the weirdest damn thing you have ever seen,” Hutas says. “You can ride a bicycle on the beach, and one day I ride by and a house is missing, just an empty lot now. And you ask yourself, well, what was here? So what I did was I photographed every block of Hermosa Beach on the Strand. In about four hours I made $12,000. Women were walking out of the show with prints under each arm. It was crazy.”

For Hutas, the absolute unknown of each day is the underlying motivation to rise again each morning. The excitement of not knowing what or whom he may stumble upon throughout his day only further propels his passion for photography.

“All day I walk around. I spend hours and hours walking around. I don’t even eat,” he says. “Then as I make my way back home, I can’t wait to go home and look at all the photos I took that day. Before I go to bed I have a sandwich, and lie on my back, and the way I go to sleep is I relive my whole day all over again. I weigh each photograph that I have taken. It’s an exciting thing.”

 Then there were three

Hutas and Sarr can still remember meeting John Cantu for the first time.

“He always wore a long black trench coat,” Hutas says. “When you talk to John, he grabs a little bit of what you say and then he draws it and he paints it. It’s really unique.”

One night when Hutas and Cantu were having a cup of coffee, Hutas began to tell Cantu an old Hungarian joke about how to remedy a cold. According to Hutas, you lie in bed with the covers all the way up to your neck; the only things not covered are your toes and head. “What you do is, you put a hat on your toes, and you drink hot tea with rum in it, until you see two hats!” says Hutas, erupting with a deep chuckle.

Robi Hutas and John Cantu.

Within moments of hearing Hutas’ joke, Cantu had already began to scribble down sketch of the joke. “I have books filled with all of these little drawings of these sayings and jokes that I draw out and turn into paintings,” says Cantu. “They come from little moments in life.”

Cantu’s art preys on the unexpected nature of real life. Whether it’s the lonely man, sitting by himself, drunk at the bar or a celebrity’s random act of kindness, Cantu finds inspiration in the smallest semblance of life. His painting entitled “Lady Gaga Save the World,” shows the celebrity topless with X’s over her breasts. Black stars and a large red circle sit behind the pop singer.

“After the tsunami, she was one of the only people that stepped up and said, ‘Let’s support Japan,’” Cantu explains. “You have all these nimble-footed Hollywood types who were afraid to do anything. But she did something awesome and gave back to a country that had done so much for her career. She made an impression.”

Hutas puts it simply.

“A photographer and an artist is in a constant unknown – you never have any idea of what’s going to happen,” he says. “But when something does happen you just take a photograph or you paint. Like it was a good idea right then. You come up on something and you take a step back. It’s the thing that you look at and you say, ‘Whoa!’”

“It Seems Like Yesterday” opens with a reception Sept. 15 from 5 to 10 p.m. at 608 North Francisca, Redondo Beach, and runs through Sept. 30. See www.608north.com for more info. 

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