Sights and sounds at the new Fugitive Art

Sights and sounds at the new Fugitive Art

Karl Haglund’s new studio presents people, passions in artwork

I just met Karl Haglund, the artist behind the guitar paintings that have been such a big part of the ambiance at Aromas. Aromas moved, and he’s moved into their former spot between the new McQuillen Place and Prichard Law Office. A take-out pizza place is going up in the back.

Friday night was the grand opening of his new place, Fugitive Art. He was greeting people in front, answering questions about the poster-sized photos on the first room’s walls — faces from Charles City smiling or just looking back at you. Chances are if you didn’t recognize any of them, you’d recognize somebody on the slideshow cycling through in the back room, where the sandwiches, chips and dips were. His young daughter was working on something on a desk behind the food.

The two rooms are divided by a dark room with those massive flash umbrella-like looking things on one side and a place for the photo shoot’s model on the other side. Judging from the photos of football player Brandt Gebel emerging from darkness Karl had on display, this is where he had stood — in a room where one of it’s windowed wood doors read Asbury Tea Room.

Inquisitive visitors prompted Karl to take about his life from his first camera to the career that he says he can’t believe he

Chris Baldus

Managing Editor gets paid for having so much fun.

His first camera, by the way, was a Continental Electroflash 126, the kind you’d put one of the film cartridges that are reminiscent of Fred Flintstone’s car with two cylinder wheels at each end. He remembers talking is out and shooting 400 pictures of seagulls, which he had never seen before, but did not really impress his mom.

Remember, these were the days when you’d pay for the drug story or Photomat to develop your film and make prints.

Across the room from where that camera was stashed –– and it has Karl Haglund on the back in those plastic punch letter labels on the back — is a painting of a digital camera he’s interested in these days to add to his high-quality arsenal. His signature guitar paintings are on the walls along with some streetscapes from a skateboarding comic artist he knows. He has a framed vinyl record from another acquaintance that traded it for some of Karl’s art. He has more vinyl records and a player at home and said guys with beards –– like him — always have vinyl records somewhere. I and two other bearded guys standing next to him agreed.

I told Karl how much I enjoyed his photos, particularly a picture he took of a family walking hand-inhand across a wild prairie that was in the slideshow in back.

I told Karl how much I liked it. He smiled, said he tromped through tick-infested weeds and had a great time taking that photo.

It’s so much fun, he said.

I can’t believe I get paid to do it.