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"self portrait"
copper tiger through a hoop
Springfield, Missouri, private collection
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hand built copper male torso
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Within two years, Robertson had a thriving business,
showing at art fairs and galleries around the country. Eventually he gathered a
staff of seventeen assistants, all kept busy working on various projects from
interior design work to public commissions. However, after several years, he
realized that he’d had to become more of a manager and businessman than an
artist.
“I finally just let everybody go when I realized
that I had lost all of my creative time,” he says. “The part that I enjoyed
most had become impossible.”
The downsizing turned out to be an auspicious career move.
The amount of work issuing from his studio shrank drastically in
volume, but when he returned to the creative aspects and hands-on work that he
liked best, he found that his joy grew in tandem with his reputation.
Robertson has spent many hours working in
solitude mulling over his philosophy. He explains his overall goals, “I
see the object as the vehicle of truth. We all know truth when we see it, that’s
why the classics endure. A true line is a true line and is absolutely beautiful
and touches us all. If a piece of art takes an essay to hold it up, then it’s
nothing. An object should be able to stand alone.”
“Every object created is destined either for a
dump or a museum eventually. Fashionable things go to the dump, while other
objects are beyond fashion and never get tossed away. I decided early on to try
to get to the truth with everything I took time to make, if it was a dustpan or
a human form.”
“To paraphrase Brancusi, he continues, ‘To make
these things is not hard. The hard part is to attain the state that makes the
work possible.’”
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One of his most striking works is
actually an entire atrium he designed for the Forest Institute of
Psychology in Springfield, Missouri. The sky-lit room is in the center of
the building, but Robertson created an entire environment that bespeaks
open-air tranquility. The five part fountain has a great visual as well as
auditory impact, while a series of wall panels takes the viewer’s eye up
toward the mobile that hangs from the high ceiling. Even the wall sconces
were built to spill out a softened light. Robertson loves the fact that
the Institute reports that the room is a popular place for meditation and
reflection.
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atrium for the Forest Institute
of Psychology, Springfield, Missouri
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life-size
horse sculpture
collection of Dorothy Greenwald |
Despite the fierce dedication to his work,
Robertson doesn’t take himself too seriously. His sense of humor is evident in many of his pieces. One of his more recent commissions is a life-size
horse sculpture created for Dorothy Greenwald. The mare stands alert in a wooded
yard, harnessed with copper to an authentic Amish buggy. The piece embodies so
much animation that the viewer wonders when the horse will lower
it’s raised hoof.
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Robertson explains the irony. “I built the
entire piece from old truck body parts. For instance, the flanks are made
from the hood of a 1952 Chevy. I loved the idea of an early “horse-less
carriage” reconfigured into the shape of a literal horse.” He
completes the humor by pointing out a bird’s nest safely sheltered in
one nostril of the horse. “Nature working together with art,” he
laughs.
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Another whimsical work is a copper bell fountain:
When the water fills a hinged cup to a certain level, the cup tips. The
water flows down to the next level but the tipping motion rings a bell.
Robertson’s humor is also readily apparent in the many mobiles and
stabiles (a mobile on a fixed base) he’s created. Some liken his work to
Alexander Calder and Robertson acknowledges the similarities. “After
all, Calder created the moveable sculpture. The most wonderful thing about
mobiles is that they instantly make a space come to life.”
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copper bell fountain
private collection
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Lee Robertson with his stabile
collection of John and Natalie Alberici
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One of Robertson’s mobiles, part of New Orleanian Rick Jordan’s
collection, is entitled “Wine, Women and Song.” Foaming green champagne
bottles, blue notes and orange women’s torsos move madly around each other
with a the merest suggestion of a breeze. And in a stabile Robertson created on
commission last year, the eighteen foot high structure is painted with bright
primary colors. It’s easy to see that the sculpture is meant to be a toy that
will bring delight to even the oldest set of eyes
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Robertson actually fabricates even his largest
sculptures alone in his studio. While some pieces are made from steel, the
majority are fashioned from copper. He begins by building a skeletal
framework and then hammers sheets of metal into a smooth submission,
welding them into place with a buttery skill. One series he has continued
through the years is comprised of both male and female hollow formed
torsos. The sculptures are explicit but simple, the curves meeting and
matching in ways that surprise any viewer and amaze any metalsmith.
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male torso
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female torso
collection of Steve & Carol Christiansen
Springfield,Missouri
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The same simplicity is the hallmark of his copper
wall panels. Although he’s created many panels covering a variety of subject
matter, the perennial favorites of gallery patrons are his “Love Poem”
series. This series depicts female figures in such a specific fashion that they
sometimes appear at first to be abstracted studies.
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“The idea is to present the human figure in
a way that a viewer could only see if they were observing from a very
close and intimate perspective,” Robertson explains. “I want a few
lines to reveal as much emotion and intimacy as possible.”
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"Love Poem Series"
copper wall panal
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"Love Poem Series"
copper wall panel
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The technique Robertson uses to create the
panels is as unique as it is recognizable. A sheet of copper is textured
as if it were a blank canvas. Basic lines are then “drawn” with copper
wire then welded to the surface. When the “drawing” is completed,
Robertson manipulates acids that react with the copper to add color and
shading. When the work is complete, imron – the coating used to protect
the finish on automobiles and jets - is applied to protect the piece, as
well as stop further oxidization and color change.
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patinated
copper wall panel |
In some of the Robertson’s newest panels, he uses only the acids and
patinas to “paint” onto the textured copper surface, creating exotic,
mysterious landscapes where mountain valleys are filled with rolling fog. He
says these newest explorations are merely “tendrils growing up toward the
light. Every application is built on the body of work that’s come before. It’s
an organic layering and like a vine, it does not grow back on itself.”
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In one of Robertson’s volumes of poetry, “Mind
Like a Mirror,” there is a poem entitled “Show of Hands.” The lines
seems to sum up a romantic idealism that’s been tempered by a lifetime of
heating and twisting metal in a very physical way:
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“…my hands are scarred and lumped
for all the years of rough work
the bent finger was bit in a brawl…
for black creases they often look like road maps,
nails irregular and broken
stained by what has filled them
cuticles torn and brown
yet all somehow quite in place…”
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steel hand-wrought gate
New Coast Gallery, Reed Spring, Missouri
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Robertson’s work is available at:
Jean Braly Gallery, New Orleans,
LA (504) 524-3208
Quarter Moon Gallery, Bay St. Louis,
MS (228) 467-7279
New Coast Gallery, Reed Spring,
MO. (417) 272-8386
Central Park Gallery, Kansas City,
MO (816) 471-7711
Talk Of The Town, Washington,
VA (540) 675-3625
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Ellis Anderson is a studio jeweler living in Bay
St. Louis, Mississippi. She is also an accomplished writer. Below,
she shares her thoughts on her life and her art.
When I was five years old, I kept a
suitcase packed and hidden under the bed. I was ready to leave as soon as an
available freighter heading towards Africa steamed into Charlotte, North
Carolina. Tarzan, Jane and Boy - who obviously needed a human friend his own age
- were waiting for me in their jungle home. Later, my 5th grade diary listed my
goal in life: To be an adventuress. I supposed that adventuresses wore a lot of
jewelry so I made my own - from beads and paper, wire and copper. When I discovered
as a young adult that English majors and adventurers seldom find employment, I
was inspired one night by vagabond jewelers in a tiny train station in Norway.
They traveled, they made beautiful things, they sold enough to eat. It looked
good to me. Most of my metals training since then has been from other jewelers,
informally or in workshops, from books and from wildly experimenting on my own.
My favorite tool on my bench is a
torch. I love to play with the fire, bend that intense heat to my will, taming
it to solder the most delicate joints without destroying the pieces. My next
favorite tool is the jeweler's hand saw, with it's almost invisible steel teeth,
fragile yet sharp enough to cut gold and silver and the occasional stray finger.
Pretension and trendiness are pesky
intruders. I try to swat them out of my studio while making tea for whimsy and
change. My favorite designs make me laugh and trigger memories of deserts and
oceans and trains trips at midnight. My goal is to create work that makes the
wearer feel light-hearted and powerful - designs that are clean, unmuddied by
conformity and crafted with precision. I want my pieces to be worn and
treasured, jewelry that makes one feel confident and lucky and aware of
different languages.
After twenty fabulous years of
living in the French Quarter, I have moved full time to Bay St. Louis, MS. The
old-timers in the Bay call my place there the Monkey House. A wonderful
eccentric owned the house earlier in the century – she kept a monkey who used
to escape periodically and terrorize the neighbors. No monkeys (yet), but my
terrier Frieda has made a name for herself balancing on the handlebars of my
bicycle when we go out riding. In the evenings we cruise down by the Gulf of
Mexico, where I’ll watch the ships pass and wonder which ones are headed for
Africa. Then we go home to sleep on the bed that’s over the suitcase, the one
that's still packed and ready to go.
Ellis Anderson in her studio
ellis@datasync.com
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