Robert Hartman

Robert Hartman, 83, of Wampum passed away Tuesday, January 28, 2025 at his residence.

Born May 29, 1941 in Freedom, he was the son of the late Lester and Althea Hartman.

For many years Bob owned and operated Hartman Silkscreen in Wampum.

Survivors include his son, Robert Hartman, II of Michigan and his daughter, Amy Hartman of Washington.

Per his wishes, no services will be held. He will be interred in Clinton Cemetery.

Tribute from his daughter Amy,

The green grass felt soft and the Robins chirped cheerfully- the birds seemed louder than what I could remember before the darkness. I was under an inch of plaster with two straws in my nostrils so I could breathe. I reached out for my dad’s arm to make sure there was still someone standing outside my Plaster-of-Paris darkness. “Is it okay to move yet?” I asked. I bet we looked awesome in our yard with straws poking out of our noses!

Dad’s art project for the day was the “Family Busts” project - a little eccentric, even for him! The family was placed tilted backwards in reclining lawn chairs in the grassy backyard, where we got the nostril straw treatment. Dad protected our face with a smear of Vaseline, then plastered us from the neck up with the thick white Noxema-like Plaster of Paris. It’s a sculpture medium that’s safe for skin but dries and molds to anything it touches. We fully trusted in the straws! To this day, I have a disproportionate affection for straws. 

No movement was allowed (difficult with the bees buzzing around)! A half-hour later though, voilà, we were rewarded as a mold of our faces popped off- it was so cool! Dad made a silicone mask from the mold, filled it, and we had a painting lesson in face contouring. The family busts hung in our entryway forevermore. My brother and I would tap the four stoic foreheads for good luck on our way out the door, and sometimes try to pick their noses (ahem, that was my brother).

Aaaahh, a day in the life of the kids of Bob Hartman!

Though I feigned embarrassment, deep down I was in awe of my eccentric father. Creative, imaginative, seemingly impervious to the judgment from outsiders, child-like and enthusiastic about everyday miracles. The world was his oyster! Always a project up his sleeve. You couldn’t ask for a more fun dad! 

Bob marched to the beat of his own drummer. Fortune favors the bold. And he was bold. Largely unencumbered from social restraints that hold many of us back, unconventional living came naturally. If he wanted something in life, he knocked on the universe’s door and asked. If the universe didn’t answer right away, he found a back door. 

One of those back doors he found early in life. As a teen, he wrote a letter to the famous Norman Rockwell, seeking art career advice. To his amazement, Norman wrote back! He recommended the prestigious Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. It was a long shot, but dad applied … and was flatly rejected. So he called the school, lied to an admissions officer to get a second application “for his records,” and applied again. This time, he listed Norman Rockwell as a referral. He got the letter back and eagerly tore it open: ACCEPTED! The back door swung open to reveal a California vista and one of the greatest adventures into art, freedom and free-spirited living.

Tempering that hippy spirit, though, was a very hard worker. Apprenticed by his father in carpentry, he was one of the last vestiges of that “1950s guy” who could do it all. He could run electric, do plumbing, build things from wood, renovate and refurbish. 

At age 11, he built a soap box car from wood and found materials, and named it Pepper after his beloved little doggy. That year, in 1955, he cruised to a first-place finish in the Ellwood City Soap Box Derby Championship. In the photo, you will see that he is shocked. It’s classic!

His livelihood, Hartman Silkscreening, was another dovetailing of his creativity, carpentry and “screw the establishment” independence. He was sick of the dirty, exhausting work of the mill, and loved silkscreen printing in art school, so why not set up shop in our house? He became known as “the guy in town who prints shirts” and business boomed. 

My parents had to expand the business. They bought “The Old Arcade,” a decrepit, historic building on Main Street in Wampum, gutted it, hung drywall, ripped up floor boards, renovated and restored the whole building. Dad even built his own curing equipment and silkscreens. After his retirement, dad donated all of his equipment to a local man who wanted to get into printing, and also donated his time to teach the man how to use it all. 

Self-sacrifice was never far from dad’s artist’s palette. Growing up, he was always working. He put in long, grueling hours at the shop. It was a physical job, standing all day, pulling a squeegee thousands of times, hot lights above to cure inks, toxic fumes from chemicals, stressful deadlines. The more business there was, the longer hours he worked. Those many long days gave then family security and put my brother and I through college: For that we’re eternally grateful.

Bob Hartman had a quiet, quintessential childhood among the gorgeous trees and nature of Freedom, PA. He was the vice-president of his high school class, where he started his own jazz band, The Shadows, and was the lead saxophonist. He was popular, and took the head cheerleader to prom. He graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a degree in art education, and was the art director for 8 elementary schools in the Troy, PA, area. He attended the LA ArtCenter College of Design and owned Hartman Silkscreening until his retirement. 

He played seven instruments, was a painter, muralist, and loved every medium from pastels and photography to charcoal and collage. He was in love with the ethereal, light, shadows (every mural in our house was connected to a black-light so you could see the glow-in-the-dark hidden constellations come to life as the sun set). But above all he loved contemplating the cosmos, and the mysteries of the earth. 

Always using his imagination, he loved playing with zany new ideas. Once he started a perfume business from essential oils. The names were hilarious: “Ellwood City Slicker,” “Wampum Stud” with hand-drawn labels, exclusively at Leonetti’s in Wampum. Or there were his hand-printed “Famous Artist T-Shirts” (with the shirt, you also got an art history lesson card). Our basement featured a glow-in-the-dark ping-pong table, and a stop-animation studio. He loved seeing kids light up and discover their own imaginations. Family kids loved the fun-loving Uncle Bob and his art projects!

There was a quiet, brooding, intellectual side, though. He was usually lost in a book, reading for hours. He believed in letting people find their own path, so did not often “teach” us lessons. He fiercely protected our personal freedom to be whoever we were, and told us to “follow our bliss,” originally spoken famously by his mentor, the late great Joseph Campbell. 

But dad did enjoy planting seeds of wisdom. There were tidbits he shared that I’ll never forget, like the Bill Moyers’ interviews with Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth. He knew “the blind man” who was a local herbalist who secretly showed him a local wild patch of the highly sought-after herb Goldenseal, which is a potent curative for sore throats and bacterial infections of all kinds, from which dad used to treat our ailments. He believed pharmaceuticals and Western Medicine was largely overkill and was a proponent of the innate power of the the body to heal (our forgotten wisdom) with a little help from the herbs of Mother Earth. 

In his elder years, dad became a lone wolf and man of few words. Never a gossiper. Never a complainer. He stayed true to his morals and his spirit, though, and lived and died in reflection of his principles. Not a fan of fanfare, he wanted no ceremonies, no flowers, no services. I don’t think he’d mind if you wanted to donate to the local animal shelter in his name though. He loved his little dog.

Dad was my spirit animal. He was a mystical person who saw the bigger picture in ways that most of will ever only glimpse. If you ever want to contemplate the larger picture the way he regularly did, watch those Bill Moyers interviews with Joseph Campbell (free on the library app Kanopy), or read any book by Carlos Castaneda, his favorite author. 

My dad lived authentically, boldly, and fiercely independent until the very end. He died in the apartment he built in the building he renovated that catapulted his own successful business, which he used to raise his family. He leaves behind three grandchildren and a legacy of beautiful art and ideas. 

Bob Hartman lived a full and exceptional life of imagination and creativity. He never stopped marching to the beat of his own drummer. That drummer reverberates into the cosmos now, leaving us with echoes of the mysteries he loved so well.