Robert Craig

My current work points both inward to the inherent qualities of metal and outward to the constructed environment and to the history of the industrial age. The processes involved in the shaping and fabrication of metal informs my art making. Integral to my most recent work is the collecting of a range of objects designed for industrial and domestic use. Each particular artifact leads to deeper research, discovery, and understanding. I am drawn both to common and to obscure objects from a modernist appreciation of form. My interest is sustained by my awareness that these objects were designed for hand use as well as by my recognition that they are artifacts of a time when technology was still largely dependent on manual processes. The objects’ shape, part-to-part functional relationship, age and wear become points of interpretation and abstraction. I further consider the objects’ form, function, and history through drawing and model building: these activities refine my sculptural ideas and help define the specific range of associations and representations the sculpture will elicit. Color is a critical element and the colors are chosen to be as suggestive as the structure itself.