Real estate broker by day, renaissance woman by night

Real Estate Weekly, June 4, 2003 by Sabina Mollotov

Ruth Hardinger is a partner at the Douglas Elliman real estate agency' in TriBeCa, an established sculptor, printmaker, tapestry maker and film director, but don't call her a star!

Her recent documentary "I'm a Pilot. Like You," shown at the TriBeCa film festival on May 7-8 is partially about her own (unwanted) celebrity experiences, which came ironically, not from her successful careers in art and real estate but a terrible tragedy that brought an entire nation onto Hardinger's front door step.

The film chronicles the 10 days arid nights after John and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy's plane crashed in 1999, and the effect it had -- national grief and nonstop media coverage around the North Moore Street building the couple had inhabited for over seven years and Hardinger still. lives in. Suddenly fiardinger's home, which the Kennedy couple valued for its relative privacy, was the, most famous doorstep in America.

"'I'm a Pilot Like You' deals with a tragedy that impacted. the neighborhood; the block and my front door," said Hardinger.

"TriBeCa was once considered the suburbia of Manhattan. It was off the beat and path. I liked it being anonymous, but now it's a well-known place where I can make a living in real estate, because of my role as an insider."

Hardinger prefers not to discuss her relationship, if any with her late neighbors with the media, and found her overnight status as celebrity neighbor "misplaced."

"Especially because they're gone,". said Hardinger. "This was suddenly a famous building, but the constitution wasn't written here."

However, she found herself as an artist personally affected and inspired by the events happening around her in New York, from the Kennedy plane crash to the collapse of the World Trade Center. This can be seen in her sculptures, drawings and of course "I'm a Pilot Like You."

That project began shortly after Kennedys' deaths, when her sidewalk was transformed into a monument covered with flowers. and abuzz with prayer. Hardinger attempted to record the people grieving in front of her home with a video camera her father loaned her, only to find out she couldn't figure out how it worked. However later that night in her neighborhood she ran into long time friend and local filmmaker Bill Bland, who volunteered right then to shoot the footage with his own camera.

What began as an activity borne out of idle curiosity stretched out into a real film project over the next few days, and Bland became Hardinger's partner and co-director. Bland is also a veteran experimental filmmaker, whose work has been exhibited since 1973 in venues from museums to film festivals to television. Some of his films include. "Home Less Home" (1990) and Skinside Out (2002).

Hardinger enjoyed the experience working with Bland, calling him a "superb technician and artist.

"The idea of the collaboration is that it took me out of my vocabulary and into another place created by me and the collaborator. This isn't the type of flint Bill would normally make. And if I had done it alone it would've been very different. It was artistically rewarding."

The work itself was hardly Hardinger's only reward. Besides being shown at the TriBeCa Film, Festival, Hardinger has won numerous awards for her artistic endeavors, including the Fulbright Grant Award. She has been a visiting artist and lecturer at Lehman College, CUNY, New York University, the University of Colorado, Washington University in St. Louis, Parson's School of Design, Brandeis University, the Rhode Island School of Design, and others."

Her work has been displayed at the Chase Manhattan Bank, museum of Modem Art, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, The New York Public Library, and the Library of Congress.

Recently, Hardinger traveled to Mexico, a trip that inspired several drawings, a book and a video about working with Mexican artisans. Hardinger, who has traveled extensively, has a strong appreciation for traditional Mexican art, which includes a lot of symbols and natural elements. Many of her tapestries feature offering bundles, yucca plants and other images drawn from her studies of Mexican history and contemporary culture.

Some of those pieces were recently exhibited at the Kristen Frederickson gallery in TriBeCa. Hardinger's artwork has also won her international success. Last year alone, she had several solo exhibitions in galleries in Mexico and Spain as well as throughout the U.S., from New York to Santo Domingo.

However, not all of her artwork is culture-related. Some of Hardinger' drawings and paintings from the past couple of years have been inspired by world tragedies like the September 11 attacks. Her graphite drawing "110101" named after the date it was created, depicts falling structures and a big black hole.

In it, she was "dealing with things falling apart and being put back together in hasty way."

Much of the artwork she created during that period, was equally stark and bereft of the colorful style she is known for, often dominated by "place sensitive" floating geometrical shapes and images. In their place were darker, more abstract images.