It’s shaping up to be a busy fall at the studio, with multiple commissions on the go, the Culture Crawl in November, and a special event with Canuck Place Children’s Hospice in October.

If you’ll be in the Vancouver area, Save the Date for the Crawl: November 19th-22nd.

Robinson Studio is proud to be partnering with Canuck Place Children’s Hospice this Autumn for The Art of Community Give Back Campaign.

Throughout the month of October, Robinson Studio will be donating 30% of proceeds from eligible artwork sales to Canuck Place. We also invite direct donations, which can be made here.

Your contribution helps Canuck Place provide crucial services to communities throughout BC and the Yukon. From pediatric palliative care to bereavement counselling, compassionate support is at the heart of their calling. These services have touched David’s family as they have so many others.

A private event will be held October 1st. If you haven’t received an invitation but are interested in attending, please reach out for details.

There are no minimum or maximum amounts payable in this campaign. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with questions about this program. And if you’d prefer to make a direct donation, please click here.

USG Closure and Muddy Meanderings

Numerous industries have been rocked lately by the news that the United States Gypsum plant in Oklahoma is closing its doors. USG Oklahoma creates a wide variety of specialty plaster products that are critical to sculpture production, dental work, movie special effects, ceramic products such as toilets and sinks, and much more. Our local distributor is looking as far afield as Turkey to fill the void.

In the meantime, David is happily exploring ways to ration our plaster and model his figures in readily available products. A new series sculpted in drywall mud is keeping him inspired. The long working time gives him the opportunity to make use of all the phases the material offers - from the loose, wet gestural phase where it can be piped like icing, through the clay-like behaviour as it sets, into the precise, clean carving of the hardened material.

The USG closure is only the latest of many in recent years as deindustrialization and economic shifts reshape our landscape. Some losses are irremediable, but David’s love of materials and experimentation give us latitude to adapt.

Enjoy this brief clip of David in his element:

More announcements coming soon, but I’ll keep this one short and sweet. If you’d like to check out our latest blog post, you’ll find it here:

Thank you for joining us here on Substack!

Leave a comment

William Blake may be one of the best-known of the Romantic artists, and his words here illustrate the preference in that era for integrating broader, more embodied modes of perception than the analytical norms of the Enlightenment.

My natural temperament does not lend itself to such nuanced perception, but my years of working in David Robinson’s sculpture studio have helped me develop it, and my experience is richer for it.

David’s work is sometimes viewed as existentialist and individualistic, and I can understand how it can be perceived in those ways. But to me the work consistently situates the figure in contexts that speak to the porosity of experience, to contingence, to relationality. And perhaps that is in part a function not of what I see looking at the work, but how I see when looking at the work.

Blake’s era was an apogee of the implicit and the relational in the arts. While David’s work isn’t Romantic in all respects, I see echoes and resonances that he has arrived at intuitively through his practice. I’ll explore a couple of them below.

In the Romantic era, we saw landscapes expressed in terms of views from afar and views from above, illustrating a vastness that suggested both the capacity for broad perspective, and a sense of longing, with the paradox of connection and separation embedded within it.

To me, David’s work explores this same key. The environment acts upon the figure, who is often dwarfed by their surroundings. The figure engages with the environment, and some glimpse of a tenuous equilibrium may tease us against the backdrop of inevitable change. The figure may be forging their own meaning, but their context contributes a meaning of its own; this is not a nihilistic struggle. We understand that the environment is itself dynamic, that the continual churnings of time and hope and entropy and will are all unfolding together inside the apparent bounds of the artwork, and out into the world as well.

Romanticism was also known for its resistance to the explicit. In Iain McGilchrist’s words:

The Romantics, too, had a predilection for whatever can be only partly discerned - for unfinished sketches, for the half-light of dawn, for scenes by twilight or moonlight, for music heard afar off, for mountains whose tops are obscured by mist that comes and goes.

He points out that research findings consistently show right-hemisphere engagement when an image is presented either fleetingly or in degraded form, such that only partial information is available. As a viewer, imagining the part that is missing or ambiguous is an act of co-creation. David has found that obscuring key elements of the figure, or abstracting the figure to various degrees, can be effective ways of drawing in the viewer, sparking curiosity, prolonging engagement, and encouraging a more embodied exploration around the sculpture in three dimensions. As well as avoiding the explicit, this layering of elements compounds the sense of deep environmental enmeshment of the pieces, blurring the boundaries of the work, just as Romantic paintings created a felt sense of a vast and immanent world.

Philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder understood the insufficiency of mere sight in the contemplation of sculpture. He wrote: “‘the living, embodied truth of the three-dimensional space of angles, of form and volume, is not something we can learn through sight”, for great sculpture is

Physically present, tangible truth. The beautiful line that constantly varies its course is never forcefully broken or contorted, but rolls over the body with beauty and splendour; it is never at rest but always moving forward… Sight destroys beautiful sculpture rather than creating it; it transforms it into planes and surfaces, and rarely does it not transform the beautiful fullness, depth, and volume of sculpture into a mere play of mirrors… Consider the lover of art sunk deep in contemplation who circles restlessly around a sculpture. What would he not do to transform his sight into touch, to make his seeing into a form of touching that feels in the dark?

If the eye sees in a detached way, the sculpture is undone. If the eye is feeling on behalf of tactile sense, kinaesthetic sense, empathetic sense, temporal sense, if these senses are coupled to the eye, only then can the sculpture be fully appreciated.

Or, as Maurice Merleau-Ponty said, “To see the art is to plunge into it.”

There is a recurring event at the studio when we get a new hire. Inevitably David will check in on the progress of the newbie, and ask to “see” the piece they are working on. In David’s words: “One of my assistants once explained to another that my request to ‘see’ a piece they were working on would more correctly be construed as a request to ‘hold’ it. These things are inseparable in the sculptor’s sensibility. The play of light is bereft without the pull of gravity.”

In this essay , which expands upon my hands-on experience in the studio, I described how David’s finished works become something more than seen:

Often, when I have been intimately involved in the production of a piece — particularly the first in a new edition, or a unique commission — it becomes an animate presence for me… Countless operations are needed to walk this path, and with every step, the vision of what is emerging clarifies. Once complete, in the studio, I admire its form with excitement, but it hasn’t yet been imbued with the final spark of life. Yet when we hang it on the gallery wall, or install it on location, a strange transformation occurs. It suddenly has a presence that far exceeds its form. It feels emergent, claiming its rightful place in a void that had been awaiting it. All the creative acts that built it up out of nothing cohere into a scintillescent presence that speaks from the interplay of matter and consciousness.

This presencing of the artwork holds true for many viewers of David’s work, but as I described above, can be amplified by the act of contributing to its production.

Perhaps this is because that process engages so much more than just the eyes. When I have worked on a piece my whole body has performed a complex choreography. I have kinaesthetic knowledge of the weight and balance of the artwork elements. The thousands of mechanoreceptors in my fingertips have cavorted with the textures of the surfaces. I have picked up a cold bronze and felt it warm in my hand, warm further under the friction of tools, and heat to burning under my welding torch. I have smelled the tang of metal and the toast of burning oil. I have felt the dust of cement in my nostrils and the cloying slick of uncured silicone rubber on my fingertips. I have grappled with the torque of threaded connections and the structure of hollow elements. With propane torch in one hand and spray bottle in the other, I have gestured like an orchestral conductor in the application of patinas, and I have scrubbed and buffed waxed finishes ’til my fingers cramped.

After such a process, my eyes can not help but see on behalf of my body. The heft, the texture, the temperature, the structure, they are all there in my embodied response to what I see. Even my visual field is informed by the countless other lighting conditions in which I viewed the work and its constituent parts.

Perhaps Blake was encouraging us to go further still, to see beyond the material into the radiant presence of reality. Along that path I might notice that my experience of textures ‘out there’ is in fact only ever an experience of my body. The objects that I refer to as rough and smooth and slick are experienced as varieties of hand-ness and finger-ness and skin-ness. The cold bronze that warms in my hand is experienced as my hand warming itself. We can abstract all this as the firing patterns of nerve-endings, but when I really tune in, they are felt as endless immersive fluctuations in a continuous field.

Back in a more cerebral mode, my experience of a sculpture is influenced by knowing something of its parentage. I understand the works that came before, and the ways in which this particular design developed under David’s hand. The evolving sketches in his book, the layers of clay upon the armature, the iterations that haunted the studio until the final form emerged.

I feel the ecosystem of all this knowing, even as I use solely my eyes.

But none of that labour or context is necessary to experience this einfulung, this deep connection to the art. Absent all that, I can look at Apotheosis and feel the strain in my hips and ankles, the bite of the cable in my hand, the vertiginous height of my strenuous perch. I can look at Intraspection and feel the knowingness of the Other that remains unseen, the attenuation of self, the pull of past and future.

David said the other day “The studio doesn’t differentiate between objects and processes” and I hope and believe that orientation influences the work, and the way it is perceived, for the better. It may shift our viewers away from seeing the art, towards perceiving the art-ing that is occurring in the collaboration between themselves, the work and the world.

But this practice of seeing ‘thro’ the eye cannot be practiced online, mediated by the screen. So I invite you to make a date — really, I mean right now in your calendar — to visit a local museum, gallery, or artist studio, especially one that homes quality sculpture, and playfully explore this mode of seeing. How does the work presence to you?

If you’d like to share any reflections on your own experiences with this practice, I’d very much love to hear about it in the comments. If they are extant, jump in the comments now, or go out on your art date and see if you come back with any stories to share.

Thank you as always for your valuable attention,

~ Sage

Hello! Sage here with the 18th edition of our studio blog.

One of our challenges here at the studio is operating in a manner that is both values-driven and viable in the modern world. I’ll give you an extreme example.

The studio is adjacent to a rail yard in East Vancouver, and for several months a year the Rocky Mountaineer train stops right outside our door. Many people enjoying this mode of travel are potential patrons, so David proposed that we might install a billboard on the side of the building to catch the eye of these waiting travellers.

I believe in the value of David’s work, and I believe that even a photograph of his work can have a positive impact on the viewer. So far, so good.

And yet I also think carefully about attention as a resource - not only for those that seek to capture attention, but for the people whose attention is being solicited.

In The World Beyond Your Head, Matthew Crawford posits that we are facing a tragedy of the commons pertaining to our capacity for attention:

“There are some resources we hold in common, such as the air we breathe and the water we drink… their widespread availability makes everything else we do possible. I think the absence of noise is a resource just of this sort. More precisely, the valuable thing that we take for granted is the condition of not being addressed. Just as clean air makes respiration possible, silence, in this broader sense, is what makes it possible to think… I think we need to sharpen the conceptually murky right to privacy by supplementing it with a right not to be addressed…”

“In the main currents of psychological research, attention is treated as a resource - a person has only so much of it. Yet it does not occur to us to make a claim for our attentional resources on our own behalf. Nor do we yet have a political economy corresponding to this resource, one that would take into account the peculiar violations of the modern cognitive environment…

“Capitalism has gotten hip to the fact that for all our talk of an information economy, what we really have is an attentional economy, if the term “economy” applies to what is scarce and therefore valuable….

I believe this is a vital issue. And so, is it ethical to hang a billboard that may impose upon those who have not asked to have their attention gathered? How can we raise awareness without stealing mental bandwidth? Where can one reasonably draw the line?

The impacts of such intrusions are everywhere, from the ceaseless notifications on our phones, to spam emails, to targeted ads, to the co-opting of something as fundamental as a colour for political purposes. For instance, it concerns me that here in Vancouver it has become hard to simply experience the warmth and vitality of the colour orange without having one’s thoughts drawn into the complexities of the Every Child Matters campaign.1

Debates around these impositions can show up in unlikely places. In the hiking community there is a principle called Leave No Trace (”LNT”). This is largely an ecological standard, but debates around LNT can also touch on this freedom from being addressed.

For instance, hikers on the West Coast Trail have developed a convention of poking holes in leaves to create smiley faces. Many people find these “leaf fairies” to be fun and whimsical, like an easter egg hunt. Others find them to be a sort of defacement of the natural world, and an unwelcome reminder of human interference in a place where they have gone to seek out nature.

But of course it is the digital landscape that dominates this conversation. Ted Gioia’s superb recent article 10 Reasons Why Technological Progress Is Now Reversing is one if the best articulations I’ve seen of this toxic trend. He describes numerous incentives and processes that have compromised tech that acts in service to users and supplanted it with tech that undermines users for the benefit of a select few.

Those exploiting this attention economy have inevitably driven us all towards dopamine addiction and endless distraction.

Working in an artist’s studio has heightened my sensitivity to this, because attentional quietude is crucial for both making and engaging with art.

Part of why I’m passionate about the studio is that David’s practice, and I believe by extension his work, act counter to these modern trends. He builds upon traditional methods, using real materials, and working from a place of mental silence. These are grounding forces in a tornado of empty novelty, digital froth, disposable clutter, endless chatter and noise, and increasingly, virtual reality and AI.

And yet we at the studio need to make decisions about whether and how to engage in that world. The moment that I upload an image to Instagram, David’s real, material work has been repurposed not simply as a 2D photo, but actually as digital “content”. And when I look closely, it’s hard to deny that all such content is actually fungible. Whatever our intention, in that context the art’s function is no longer to invite contemplation, but merely to populate the feed. It may as well be a cat video once it’s been entered into the churning and bottomless mass of attention magnets being shovelled at the waiting public. But at least, unlike our billboard viewer on the idling train, our Instagram user chose to open the app.

I am lucky enough to have some of David’s work in my home, and it has been a quiet anchor there - an object for meditation. I suspect this is true for many of David’s collectors. That is the legacy that I hope for in the studio’s output. So day by day we weigh the lesser of evils, aim to keep clarifying the studio’s priorities, and trust that those who are aligned with us will find us and the work.

Are there choices you make to support silence in your life, and those who purvey it? Do you think this level of deliberation is absurd? Whatever your thoughts, I’d love to hear from you.

A Sneak Peek at New Work

Comments? Questions? Don’t hesitate to reach out. We look forward to hearing from you!

Hello, Sage here with a long-overdue blog. There’s lots of news from the studio, so if you’re keen on updates keep an eye out for our next newsletter, because today’s topic will stand alone.

Over the last few years I’ve had numerous chances to reflect on how poorly we learn from history. Though we’re prone to simply ignoring the lessons of the past, the intentional suppression of important stories can contribute to blind spots both past and present. This has been on my mind as I’ve researched such events for an international project currently underway at the studio.

Ninety years ago the people of Ukraine were subjected to a manufactured famine that murdered millions and drove the people to unthinkable, dehumanizing acts in their fight for survival. Throughout history governments have committed such heinous crimes. We expect the press to be a stalwart actor providing checks and balances on overreach and malfeasance, but history has shown us that such trust is often misplaced.

One of the lessons of the Great Famine - better known as the Holodomor - is that atrocities can be covered up surprisingly effectively. Media of the day, including The New York Times, were complicit in concealing the ‘Terror-Famine’ from their audiences, a in discrediting those who tried to publicize it. The Holodomor was not widely acknowledged in academic circles until a half-century after it occurred. To this day, despite killing numbers comparable to the Holocaust, most people have never heard of it. Whether it’s all-out concealment or a meticulously crafted narrative arc, our institutions are all too often guilty of shaping public perception for the benefit of the few.

How did The Grey Lady and other such institutions justify their suppression of the story of the Holodomor? For the greater good, of course. Shielding Stalin was seen as a way to weaken Hitler, and communism held a powerful allure to many of the intellectual elite of the day. All institutions are vulnerable to the allure of the ‘Noble Lie’, and to other, darker incentives as well. And we, with our cognitive biases, are often too trusting - and just too busy - to critically question what’s laid before us. Our heuristics prime us to discount evidence that challenges the apparent coherence of our worldviews.

The incentives that push both institutions and populations away from truth-seeking stem from imbalance in the brain. Iain McGilchrist’s research compellingly argues that tribalism, exploitation and corruption result from an over-reliance on the left hemisphere.

While the left hemisphere sees only in known, reductionist categories, the right is able to recognize new patterns and disparate relationships. While the left hemisphere is susceptible to confirmation bias, the right sees its own limitations and detects errors. While the left hemisphere is interested in manipulating and dominating its environment, the right hemisphere has a gestalt view that looks beyond self-interest. And while the left hemisphere is associated with anger, the right hemisphere can empathize with others.

When we rely on the left hemisphere we are likely to discount and even demonize those who wish to bring our blind spots to our attention, and we are susceptible to simplistic rallying cries. Freedom! Democracy! Safety! Equality! can all be used as cover for atrocities.

Where do we turn when our institutions are corruptible and our brains are weighted towards our worst instincts? I believe the answer is a bottom-up recommitment to 1) classical liberal norms and 2) right-hemisphere cultivation. The former - free speech, the scientific method, objective & balanced journalism, individual rights, transparency in government, and anti-tribalist good-faith empathy, (formalized as civility), all appear to be in decline. And the latter - including time spent in nature, acts of creation, non-conceptual engagement with art, making melodic music, and practices that cultivate embodiment - can be hard to wedge into busy, stressful, and input-saturated lives. But the good news is that we as individuals can all make the choice to prioritize these for ourselves and to support those who enact them.

And art plays dual roles within these two categories. Art can be a mode of free expression that allows us to communicate with each other about important events and values. It can remind us of past horrors when our institutions fail to do so. It can give voice to those who have suffered and celebrate those who have overcome. It can be a standing symbol of the cruelty of humanity, and how banal that evil can look as it smolders in a world of perverse incentives and short attention spans. It can hold up a mirror to the darkness in each of us. It can deliver the message that at any moment, horrors such as the Holodomor may be transpiring out of sight.

Yet art may also pull us back from the abstractions and concepts that are necessary for these cultural conversations. It may dissolve the categories of who and what and when. It may allow us to open into our more foundational humanity and resonate in raw empathy. It may allow us to learn from, and hold more wisely, the darkness within us.

With such tools and values at our disposal, it is time to re-normalize support for those who seek truth and challenge power, even when their perspectives are at odds with our own. That is the only process that can bring events such as the Holodomor into the light of public consciousness.

And in the process, we may yet build a world where such horrors are less likely to occur, and where our responses to them are more lucid and humane.

This week’s behind-the-scenes images...

Thank you for tuning in. We’ll be back with our standard newsletter in a couple weeks. Until then, wishing you all the best in these tumultuous times.

~ Sage

Greetings! Sage here with our 16th studio blog after a very long hiatus!

Many of you will remember my blog about the inception of the Limina project.

To quickly recap, Lise Owen Struthers, a longtime friend of the Robinson family, reached out to David in the midst of grieving the sudden loss of her husband. She had been engaging her grief with a level of deep, direct attention that I think few could muster in such a tumultuous time. And as she processed layer after layer of that tearing-away, she had come to discover new and surprising depths of life and beauty.

During contemplative moments, a vision had come to her, and she felt called to manifest it in the world. And so began a conversation with David about the piece that would eventually become Limina.

During the course of this project I had the privilege of witnessing two remarkable processes. Lise gave us a window into aspects of her grieving process - a process that I found astonishingly direct, vulnerable, and deeply moving. And simultaneously, I was able to watch the ineffable unfurl as she and David explored the feelings, intentions and imagery that eventually grew into Limina.

Many people gathered around this project and contributed expertise, opportunity, and financial and emotional support - so that Lise and David’s vision could be realized. Many of them are probably reading this. I am grateful to them all.

Lise says: “My hope is that Limina invites us to pause as we see her contemplatively touch the space between the protective shadow of now and the light beyond.”

I’ll leave David with the last word, with the poem that he wrote for the plaque on site:

Limina Maquettes

With Lise’s permission, we are releasing a small edition of the maquette developed for this project. 10% of the proceeds of the sales of these maquettes are being donated to the St. Paul’s Rapid Access Addiction Clinic in memory of Lise’s father, Philip Owen.

Thank you for tuning in, we hope to see you at the studio soon.

Until then, be well!

~ Sage

Greetings! Sage here with our 15th studio blog. This one is quite personal.

I’m probably not alone in feeling that despite hard work, problem-solving and a daily routine, this year has often had the feeling of being in a holding pattern; a feeling that I can’t quite track my momentum, because the world is moving in ways that resist my usual frames of reference.

So it feels fitting to me that many of David’s current projects invoke a little more stillness, and a sense of being at a threshold.

Some thresholds are more fundamental than others, and in that vein, I want to write a bit today about Limina, a project that I touched on in our last newsletter.

After the completion of Windward Calm, I was filled with a sense of meaning surpassing that from any of the studio’s previous installations. Compelled by David’s vision for the work, I was grateful for the incredible support of the people who came alongside the studio team to help realize it, and gratified by its impact on a wide community of patients, families and healthcare workers at VGH. And I wondered if another project would impact me similarly. I didn’t have long to wait - Limina has embedded me in a project that epitomizes the role art can play in supporting people as they contend with life’s greatest challenges.

Those of you who are long-time followers may remember Blog #6, Successive Approximations, which featured Pneuma, a public art proposal for the Vancouver Convention Centre. One of our readers, a long-time friend of David’s family, wrote me a reply that included the comment: “Pneuma - I found moving all the way down to that deep place. If it had been installed onsite as seen in the photo, I would stand there for ages and visit often.”

That reader, Lise Owen Struthers, had very suddenly lost her husband in June of 2019. Lise’s arduous journey to integrate that loss has been one of open attention, and in that process she has found that “the threshold of sorrow can be an intimate and luminous thin veil of unexpected new dimensions of life and beauty.”

A few weeks after Blog #6, Lise reached out to David. She had a vision to create a work of art for the Garden of Remembrance at St. John’s Shaughnessy, the church she and her husband attended for their ten years in Vancouver. The Garden holds the ashes of over 500 souls, and Lise wanted an artwork that could minister to the visitors there.

For many months, Lise and David corresponded closely on a design for the piece, their free-associative dialogue building upon Lise’s early inspirations and intuitions. The resulting sculpture will soon go into production at a life-size scale for installation next year. With the sculpture placed literally on the threshold of the Garden, the weathering steel “veil” will mark the boundary between the worlds of the living and the departed.

From my post here at the wheelhouse of the studio, my glimpses into Lise’s journey have been deeply inspiring. Her phone calls and emails are grounding. She has a rare capacity for vulnerability, a steadfast selflessness, and a curiously disarming directness. Lise has taken the intangible, personal, experience of grief and gently shepherded it into something that may offer solace to generations to come.

Lise says David “has poetically, patiently, and emphatically created an image of grace and beauty that transcends words and thought. David has brought something before us that unveils layers that speak to the inherent tensions of human life and death. With simultaneous humble vulnerability and hopeful boldness, the figure safely shelters while captivating the visitor.”

It is my hope that Limina will support many people in integrating the painful weight of grief in their lives, revealing new life and beauty along the way.

New Gallery

It’s been a pleasure to have visitors coming through the new gallery. If you’d like to arrange a visit drop us a line.

This week’s behind-the-scenes images...

Top to bottom: Finishing touches on a monumental sculpture for Trent University, David applying the verdigris patina to Plunge, and Interval saying goodbye to wine county.

Thank you for tuning in! Next time we’ll have new work to share plus photos of the installation at Trent!

Until then, stay well,

Sage

Hello and Happy Spring! Sage here with our 14th studio blog. I hope those of you in the northern hemisphere are enjoying the lengthening days.

This blog is in part about another kind of hemisphere. Those of you who are long-time readers may remember Blog #4, in which I introduced the sculpture titled Corpus Callosum and mentioned one of David’s inspirations for the piece: the work of Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and His Emissary. At the time I had dabbled in some lectures and interviews with Dr. McGilchrist, but I’m now working my way through the book and delighting in the ramifying trains of thought connecting his ideas to thousands of my own experiences and musings. And because his work points to the value of making and engaging with art, it has some relevance to these newsletters.

I can’t do justice here to his thesis outlining the overwhelming significance of the right hemisphere to both our quality of life and our most profound mental functioning. But I’ll try to gesture towards an idea or two - as I understand them so far - and weave a relevant story.

Most pop science has depicted the right hemisphere as at best, creative and emotive, and typically, flaky and flighty. McGilchrist’s research paints a very different picture. Drawing on reams of evidence spanning modern neuroscience, anthropology, and philosophers going back centuries, McGilchrist argues that the left hemisphere is in fact the weaker link, riddled with blind-spots, prone to confabulation, and generally mired in a world of feedback loops of increasingly abstracted confirmation bias. Furthermore, its orientation is one of exploitation - to carve the world of experience into deadened, detached categories, and to use them for its own benefit.

He refers to the left hemisphere as his “second favourite hemisphere” and readily acknowledges its powerful contributions to our being. It’s an exceptional tool - one that allows us to manipulate the world to our benefit in remarkable ways. But he cautions us that the right hemisphere is the wise one - the one that can see and synthesize a broader context, detect errors, recognize its own limitations, and pursue values beyond the selfish manipulation and domination of our environments. A balanced brain, and in turn a balanced society, McGilchrist argues, is one in which the gifts of the left hemisphere are directed by and used in service of the right hemisphere’s vision. Unfortunately, he suggests, we have fallen out of balance, and many of our modern ills, from environmental despoliation, to wealth inequality, to eroding liberties, to the substitution of bureaucracy for skill, to widespread cynicism and aggression, are indicators of a culture shaped by the left hemisphere wresting the reins from the right.

Creating art, and engaging with art, are two ways of helping restore the equilibrium. This is especially true for art that is not overly conceptual in nature. The left hemisphere typically sees only what it expects to see, so slowing down, getting embodied, and making space for the unexpected to emerge in one’s experience helps to subdue the left’s runaway tendencies and bring forth the right.

It’s a fascinating book, and it has only increased my gratitude for working in an environment that helps tip the scales - in its own small way - towards a culture that engages the right hemisphere.

New Work

Nimbus and Mantle are the latest pieces in David’s Earthbound series. In his words: “...the figures are no longer grappling for footing and ascension, but with synthesis and integration”.

That too is a reflection of right hemisphere values… more on that another time!

New Gallery

In other news, renovations are well under way in our new gallery on William Street. Not unlike the figures in this new series, we’re integrating ourselves further into the new studio with a significant expansion. In a few more weeks we will have it up and running and ready for distanced gallery visits by appointment. It’s a big change being out of Parker Street Studios but the new workshop is working well and the new gallery is going to be beautiful. I do hope you’ll all come for a visit and see the new digs.

This week’s behind-the-scenes images...

Top to bottom: New bronze figures underway, development of an exciting series for the fall exhibition, and Bowen, our beloved studio dog.

In the long hiatus since the last blog a few new projects have developed nicely. I’ll be back in a few weeks with some exciting updates!

Until then, stay well,

Sage

Hello! Sage here with another glimpse of life in the studio. It’s been 8 months since the first of these ”blogs” went out, and I’m noticing how the passage of time in 2020 has felt increasingly surreal. I don’t know about you, but I’ve allowed my attention to be dragged down a lot of rabbit holes of current events, and have been pulled away from some of the activities that help me maintain perspective.

This is part of why I so enjoy working at Robinson Studio. Every day as artwork passes before my eyes I get a chance to slow down and attend to David’s creations. This can have an incredibly grounding effect. Abstract art can do this for me too. It can help pull me into my body and become more centred. But for me, figurative art is especially good at eliciting feelings of compassion and empathy, and feeling more connected to the rest of humanity.

With that in mind, I want to talk a bit about David’s current body of work. The ongoing series, which was introduced to you in the last two mail-outs1, is a humble one. To some it may feel like a departure. David has his own reasons for making the choices that he has, and he’ll share them I’m sure. But perhaps my reflections will be of some interest too.

Constraints are good for creativity. Eliminating variables can force an artist to focus closely on their intent. This can translate to a more potent experience for the viewer.

In his larger body of work, David has developed an exceptional palette of materials and finishes that feel simultaneously luxurious and understated. It’s incredibly satisfying to regard his combinations of burnished bronze, blackened steel, charred wood, and hand-finished patinas.

David is also a master at using dynamic elements and disparate materials to create captivating sculpture. Some of my favourite works have a strong kinetic impact, and are energizing in their expression of tension and precarious balance.

But often the works that touch me most are the intimate ones. Works such as Pieta and Nascence communicate a living stillness that I crave in a hurried life.

David has chosen some firm constraints in this new series that limit him from taking advantage of rich materiality and dynamic formal arrangements. The result so far feels very focused to me. Some, like Metaxu and Shrine, are quiet. Others, like Entropy, are more imbued with energy. But they all focus more on the individual than the forces acting upon that individual. And they all, I feel, light up my sense of empathy and connection.

Over the last several months communities the world over have seen reasons to work together, to look past individual differences and to decrease inequality. I know that increasing access to artwork is not high on anyone’s list of critical priorities. But in choosing to use humble materials, designs that allow for a streamlined production method, and higher edition numbers, part of David’s impetus in these works is to create a series that is within reach for a much broader audience.

In that regard, I look at this as an important series. One that can foster a sense of connection and do it in a wider community.

This week’s behind-the-scenes images...

Top to bottom: A sketch for Somnolent Signifiers and the completed maquette, a sneak peek of a new work, part of the patina process for the Corpus Callosum dish, and Inhabitants during the studio move....

Much gratitude to all of you who keep coming back for these updates, and for those of you who have taken a moment to write back with your comments and reflections. The feeling of community we get through this channel is a wonderful gift. If you have questions or topics you’d like to hear about please let me know!

Warm wishes,

Sage

Hello, Sage here with our 9th studio blog. The COVID-19 era has me thinking more about the economy, and the micro and macro implications of local business and industry vs. more globalized commerce. The American-made 3M N95 masks produced using special British Columbian medical grade pulp are an example of the complexities of international interdependence.

Local industry is critical to our studio. Many sculptors get their work produced in countries such as Malaysia and Thailand, and it’s something that David may eventually try for a small selection of works. But the local, in-house methods we use are both practical and philosophical, and will always be the core of David’s practice.

Since David’s sculpture usually incorporates more than just cast bronze, we’ve developed relationships with a wide variety of local suppliers, many of whom you might not associate with sculpture. Take AMS industries, for example. Have you ever wondered about the steel and bronze dishes that David uses for many of his wall-mounted works?

These forms are created using a fascinating technique called metal spinning. Flat discs of metal, which are spinning at high speeds on an axle, get pressed over wood or steel forms using intense point-pressure. AMS clients tend to be in industries such as aerospace and agriculture, making massive orders for high-precision parts. But owners Alan and Bill English have always gone above and beyond in showing us hospitality and helping David get the parts he needs, no matter how quirky.*

Or there’s StraightUp Rigging, our go-to whenever we need to suspend a large-scale sculpture. Luke Waidmann is a resourceful, hard-working problem-solver who you’ll more often find rigging for circus acrobats or movie sets. We couldn’t have executed Windward Calm without him.

Sarber Jewellers, Coast Fiber-Tek, Lacy West, Metal & Wood Products, 3D Custom Foam, Greenbarn Potters Supply, George Third and Son, Steveston Marine & Hardware, Central Hobbies, Quality Saw, Allworld Packaging, myriad tool and hardware and metal suppliers, specialty stores for wax and patinas… We rely on so many independent small businesses to create David’s work. To those of you who have invested in a Robinson sculpture, know that you have helped to support hundreds of people in our community.

Many of our suppliers have already closed down. In Bronze, for example, was our primary foundry for many years, casting all David’s larger-scale bronzes. Owners Francois and Glenys were, in many ways, like the blood in the veins of our production studio. These days, Burton Foundry on Saltspring Island handles our mid-to-large pieces. They’re more of a boutique operation than In Bronze, but proprietor Jacob is bolstering the local sculpture community by continuing to provide these key services.

Looking at the trends, I imagine that we’ll lose more suppliers as the years go by. Some of these business owners will retire with no heirs, others will be forced farther afield to cheaper real estate, or succumb to the age of Amazon and Wish.

Our studio will be able to pivot and adjust to a changing landscape, but for now, it feels good to know that our relationships go deep and wide in the local community.

This post was inspired in part by recently-launched Instagram feed @yvrsmallbusinesslove, the brainchild of photographer Yasmeen Strang and entrepreneur and musician Moira Chicilo. Their project raises awareness of beloved locally owned businesses. Along the way they dug up some inspiring statistics:

In following their feed I’ve discovered some gems I hadn’t known, and I’m trying to think more carefully about where my money goes.

This week’s behind-the-scenes images...

Thank you for tuning in once again! And a special thank you to those of you who are connected to, or supporters of, all the local businesses that help keep Vancouver vital and resilient.

Until next time, all my best to you,

Sage

Hello! Sage here with our 11th studio blog. As we’ve adjusted to life in our new studio I’ve had some writer’s block. Moving is inherently destabilizing, and the world at large has only amplified that condition. So as I’ve thought about what to share with you all it’s been hard to find firm ground and commit to it.

We feel a lot of gratitude for the opportunity of this move. The Beedie Group has been a very supportive landlord in helping us transition between spaces, and the new studio is more conducive to the kinds of production needed for David’s work. It’s been a fresh start and an upgrade in multiple ways. But there are growing pains too - especially for David.

In his own words…:

The unfamiliarity of our new space exists, or course, within a larger unknown landscape. So many of us these days are asking what the “New Normal” will look like. The Community Ties blog was one of my favourites to date, in part because it highlighted everything that is good about a healthy and interconnected community. But as the months pass, we’re seeing that the impacts from COVID-19 and our current politics are complex and unpredictable.

There’s a certain freedom that comes from shaking up old patterns and assumptions. I’m curious, and even excited, to see what’s next.

This week’s behind-the-scenes images...

Thanks so much for tuning in again this week.

Sincerely,

Sage

Hello! Sage here with the 10th edition of our blog. We’re still wrapping up our big move, so this is a quick, bite-sized offering!

In 2014, CRUX, the journal from Regent College, published a feature on David’s work. It took the form of images of David’s sculpture combined with commentary from his father, the late Reverend Harry Robinson.

As I looked it over recently, I took special note of By Any Means, the unique suspended installation that was included in David’s last exhibition. Harry’s accompanying commentary on fear caught my eye.

Fear, and other uncomfortable emotions, are very centred in our society right now. Like many, I’ve always found art - both its making and its contemplation - to be a formidable opening to my own experiences.

One of my favourite Marginalian offerings is this one, where Pema Chödrön observes:

“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.”

It is a great gift indeed, to find that grounded place within ourselves where dignity and agency are impervious to outside forces.

This week’s behind-the-scenes images...

Thanks so much for tuning in again this week.

Sincerely,

Sage

Hello everyone, Sage here with our 8th studio blog. This post began as a behind-the-scenes peek at the Equestrian Monument we’re just finishing up at the studio. But this sculpture has a rich history, and I realized I wanted to do that some justice. I’ve included a few quotes from critics over the years, and in so-doing I’m drifting closer to ‘promotional’ language than I like to in these blogs. But I hope you’ll not hold that (or its runaway length) against me. From Star Wars to Picasso, the reactions elicited by Equestrian are fascinating to me, and I hope you’ll enjoy them too.

Few of David’s sculptures have caught the public imagination more than Equestrian (1991) and its later monumental iterations. Created just a few years after his graduation from the Ontario College of Art, it remains one of the more iconic works in David’s catalogue three decades on. I’ve had the pleasure of being involved in several installs of the monumental version, and without fail, have been asked, “What does it mean?”

On many occasions I’ve seen David queried about the meaning of this work. His reticence is a blessing I think… it leaves room for us all to explore our own interpretations.

In his artist statement, David speaks of being captivated by equestrian monuments from a young age. Before learning about the people, events, or empires they represented, he was moved by their intrinsic narrative power.

But other experiences also built the foundation for this theme in David’s work. As a child, David had been inspired by Henry Moore’s collections of stone and bone gathered at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and felt he was off to a late start in amassing his own collection of worthy artifacts. A particularly vivid memory of this drive comes from a summer spent on a ranch in Grand Prairie at age 9, during which he dedicated days to boiling and bleaching the skull of a draft horse over an open fire.

While David was studying at the Ontario College of Art he soaked up a Marino Marini exhibit. A poster of one of Marini’s equestrian pieces hung in his studio for years. Though David’s sculptures were sometimes dismissed as derivative he carried on, trusting that these explorations were worth his attention.

In his years contemplating and recreating human and equine anatomy, building up these forms from the inside out, David has been surprised by harmonies and sympathies between them that continue to shape his various equestrian-themed works.

When we think about the relationship between human and horse a vast temporal and geographical landscape opens. Looking recently at cave paintings I was reminded of David saying “These two characters - their communion - are as old as art…” So it’s strange, in a way, that the military monument looms so large in our thinking about the sculptural representation of this symbiosis.

David’s equestrian works actively invert this influence. The heroic, the beautiful, the ideological, the political - all those things we expect from the language of monument are either absent or distorted into illegibility.

A few years after its debut at the Lookout Gallery, the original Equestrian was included in a show at the Evergreen Cultural Centre. In his review, Critic Michael Scott wrote:

“Robinson’s work cries out for full-scale realization - a degree of acknowledgement that normally comes only to the most senior artists, to creators such as Bill Reid and Jack Harmon.

But Robinson’s superb sense of surface and nature of theatre qualify him for work as a monument builder.

He says, humbly, that he worries about making so grand a statement as a monument, in a society as pluralistic as this. But his Equestrian for instance, a mounted figure created in 1991, has a greatness unmatched by any sculpture in Vancouver, save for Reid’s Spirit Canoe.“

Feedback of this sort helped rally support for a monumental version of the piece, but production of the large version was still a leap of faith for David. While a patron initially got on board to commission the first one, a misunderstanding torpedoed that arrangement. Rather than giving up David went out on a limb and funded the ambitious project himself.

Equestrian Monument was one of David’s first projects to incorporate digital technology. The original sculpture was 3D scanned, turned into a computer file, and carved in styrofoam by a computer-controlled router. The foam was intentionally over-carved to leave room for the dimension of the clay that was then layered over top. The contours and textures were then re-worked by hand in the clay. David’s good friend and mentor Jo Caveno was a key participant in helping to model the enlarged sculpture.

After mould-making, the monumental Equestrian was first produced in Polymer-Gypsum, and then in bronze. Both showed at various venues around the city, delighting and confusing passers-by. One admirer was Ian MacDonald, then Founder and CEO of Liquidity Winery, who saw the bronze at the Yaletown CanadaLine station.

Liquidity Winery hosted the Polymer-Gypsum Equestrian Monument last summer, and Ian subsequently commissioned one for his collection.

While this was the second-to-last in what might be called the “white” edition, there was still some innovation involved. We knew this piece was intended for long-term outdoor display, which the first was not built for. David and Nick developed several recipes before landing on a specific combination of marble dust and resin that would be both durable and meet the procedural and aesthetic demands of the project.

Speaking of Nick, let me introduce our awesome studio tech:

Nick joined us about 2 years ago and has been an excellent addition to our team. Intelligent and with a strong intuition for making, Nick’s diverse background has made for some eclectic transferable skills. His time working in kitchens has primed him for a certain paradoxical essence of studio work - there are rules and recipes that need to be followed to a ‘T’, and, at the end of the day if it looks good and tastes good, (or looks good and is structurally sound) it is good... He’s also got a lot of experience hosting cultural events, and is warm, personable, and professional with staff, clients and suppliers.

We can always count on him for his can-do attitude, good singing voice, thoughtful commentary, and photos of his cats’ antics.

So far, Nick’s been building a solid foundation of skills with fiberglass, concrete, mouldmaking, and some wax work. Next we’ll be developing his skills with metal and patination.

Congratulations for making it through this extra-long post!

From all of us here at the studio, we hope you’re staying safe and staying inspired.

As always, if you have questions or requests please let me know, I always love hearing from you.

All my best,

Sage

• Dykk, Lloyd. In His Own Image, Vancouver Sun, March, 1993

• Fuglie, Gordon (Spring 2015). "Levity and Gravity: The Sculpture of David Robinson". Image Journal. 88: 25–35.

• Scott, Michael. Cutting Fine Figures, Vancouver Sun, October 8, 1997

Hello Everyone! Sage here with the 7th installment of this special blog series. David did a lot of the heavy lifting this week in writing a brief essay about his work Scapegoat, which I’ll share below.

Scapegoat is one of my favourite pieces from the Sinuates series, which was produced in 2015. All sculpture is technically challenging, but this series was especially so. It also pushed David into a different kind of conversation with the materials. The procedure for the Sinuates series was a sort of assemblage. David melted down the thermal resin material in a crock pot and then pulled and twisted handfuls of it, much like taffy, in a hot water bath. After creating mountains of these undulating parts, he began to fit them together into meaningful forms. Once the sculptural forms were complete, they went through an extremely labour-intensive process to be produced in bronze. While similar to the lost wax method, the idiosyncratic resin material and complex forms made the procedure extremely challenging.

Here’s what David has to say about the creation of Scapegoat:

The turbulent forms of the Sinuates series are the spilling and flowing syntax of the thermal resin in which they are conceived. The hand, entwined and alert in the twist and pull of this slow molten chaos, is midwife to a generation of random forms - and from these multitudes my assemblage of figural intuitions begin.

The image of Scapegoat for example arose out of a single embryonic coil; From the palm of my hand there suddenly gazed back at me this perfect oculus, and for me the recognition of that one eye radiated both the insight and the conviction to pursue this rising creature to see where it would lead.

But in truth a mode of contemplative cognition such as I have just described owes as much to the placental preconditions of the mind as to any romanticized flash of inspiration. In this instance the waters in question were the work of the great french thinker René Girard. My shallow mind had been steeping in the depths of his work for nearly two decades by way of the generous docent voice of the Canadian broadcaster David Cayley. Cayley’s five hour series The Scapegoat - René Girard’s Anthropology of Violence and Religion had become for me a touchstone and panoramic window from which to look onto the mythic dance of form and content that is the historical unfolding of the Judeo-Christian ethos.

As a post-Anglican vagrant of lapsed agnosticism, I am one inspired by the faith, but alas inoculated against its more viral forms... But Girard’s window shines a new light and heat into the vaulted stone interiors of the church from which legions have wandered... And I suppose maybe my now long exposure to his brilliant insights, among others, sometimes inspires me in my own work to wander that path and leave the occasional offering just outside the threshold of that same liturgical door...

So, this sinuate and iconic bronze figure I tried to make stand in accord with the way Girard has placed its anthropological significance and provenance: That is as a kind of bridge astride a chasm between the ancient and modern worlds. This span, Girard articulates, is the mostly forgotten but radical definitional inversion that the idea of the scapegoat has undergone in western culture. Namely, from its ancient tribal utility as a sacrificial containment vessel for communal violence and guilt, to the idea’s present-day connotation of essential innocence - a figure of the wrongfully convicted, for whom justice must be sought at all cost.

So by the dream/work of art we might see here, shape-shifting into intelligible form, a spirit-animal of this anthropological revelation. This iconic beast arcing bodily across the no-man’s land between chaos and order, violence and catharsis. A linguistic bridge across which humanity forever changed; turning away from shaming the victim toward shouldering the burden...

~ David Robinson, 2020

Surrounded by works-in-progress, David sorts his freshly-pulled sinuate forms.

David details the assembled bronze with a reciprocating file

This week’s behind-the-scenes images all come from the Sinuates era of the studio, and feature a few of the pieces before they were cast in bronze:

Last time, I promised that a tour of a current project would show up in this blog, but I think we’ve run out of space! So tune in next time to meet our studio technician Nick, and see what he’s working on.

Thank you for tuning in again! Feel free to reach out with any questions or comments, and until next time, I hope you and yours are enjoying these longer days in good health.

Sincerely,

Sage

Hello Everyone! Sage here with the 6th installment of this special blog series. First a note to say that going forward, I will be slowing down and releasing these every 2-3 weeks, as I can’t quite afford the investment of time required for the weekly newsletters.

This week I’m going to begin by sharing with you Pneuma, a failed public art proposal from a year ago.

David will occasionally submit proposals for public art projects or large private commissions, even knowing that the odds of securing the gig are limited. David finds that working with a prescribed site or theme in mind can be an interesting creative exercise, and ideas that are developed for these proposals often morph into designs for signature works for our collectors. An older example of this is Suspended Figure, which was initially created as a proposal for a life-sized installation in a Vancouver atrium. While the commission never transpired, the small-scale version went on to become an iconic piece in David’s catalogue.

Last year the Vancouver Convention Centre invited David to submit a proposal for the Labour Heritage Centre Asbestos Memorial that would be installed on their grounds. In response, David developed a piece he titled Pneuma.

I debated whether or not to share this story, as the subject matter may feel too close to home for some during the current crisis. But my sense is that the proposal might now resonate with an audience even larger than originally imagined.

In the end it was our friend, the kinetic sculptor Doug Taylor, who was selected to create the Asbestos Memorial. So what is next for Pneuma? I’d still love to see it created in large scale if the right opportunity comes along, and David may still choose to produce it at a small, or ‘maquette’ scale. But it has already contributed to the design of Via Negativa, which was launched last fall - a version that now feels prescient as we all lean blindly into an unknown future.

When David feels stuck or discouraged about a piece in progress he often reminds himself of Bertrand Russell’s notion of Successive Approximation. Embedded in the idea is the notion that the undertaking will never be final, perfect, pure. But bit by bit you inch closer to your vision.

In this moment of flourishing instability, the opportunity for incremental growth is available. I look forward to seeing how we may inch forward, and muddle through it, together.

This week’s behind-the-scenes images come courtesy of ceramic artist Tanis Saxby. In these days when so many are finding comfort kneading bread and tending gardens, I wanted to share some art that is literally of the earth.

“Working in clay is a conversation between the clay and myself. The fact that porcelain is the earth conjures up gratitude and a sense of reverence for me when working with it.”

“I begin with a concept sketch, then I begin to work with the clay where the real creating begins. Each sculpture is engineered specifically for that form and I make many forms and mistakes before I finally get to the one that I end up keeping. Just as a musician needs to practise their chords, I too need to practise until I get to the finished piece.”

“I teach workshops from my studio and I’m always surprised when my students expect perfection with the first sculpture they make.

I often teach them to allow for mistakes and rough sketching in the beginning to be as important as the finished product, and ultimately to enjoy the whole process.”

“The philosophy or raison d’etre of my sculptures are a composition of human struggle, strength and the result of lessons learned in this migration.The Journey of making my work is a metaphor for life. Actually, working in clay teaches me how to live and I often try and express these lessons in my clay sculptures.”

Next time, David shares some writing about his sculpture Scapegoat, and we’ll take a tour of a big project currently underway in the studio.

Thanks so much for tuning in again this week. I hope when next we ‘meet’ we find the world a little brighter.

Sincerely,

Sage

Hello again, Sage here with the 5th installment of our blog. A warm welcome to our new subscribers!

I recently read an insightful post1 on Japanese aesthetics, and was moved by a distinction the author drew between art that means to impress and art that is meant to be communed with. He states that the former, in its boldness, can “silence our own, more subtle, emotions” while the latter frees our minds to “drift to their own inclinations rather than being directed by more overt ‘statements’ in the art.”

It struck me as an important distinction - we live in an age where flashy works by Damian Hirst and Jeff Koons have fetched record-breaking auction prices. For a brief encounter, artworks may provide great value as a status symbol, or as a merely decorative object. But if we plan to spend a lot of time with an artwork, it’s worth slowing down, and noticing if it holds space for us.

While this blog will stay primarily focussed on David, I’ve decided to bring in some content from other artists as well. One of the first artists I reached out to was Kevin Boyle, a photographer whose work I’ve admired since I was introduced to it last year.

Kevin’s work seems appropriate to me right now because it invokes for me strong feelings of solitude. Kevin works with vast landscapes - glaciers, prairies, range land, and most recently, lithium pools - that dwarf the observer and evoke timescales far beyond our lifetimes. Whether you are struggling with your current isolation or longing for a taste of it, I highly recommend taking a long, slow stroll through the images on his website.

Kevin was kind enough to do some writing for us - to take us behind the scenes and get a snapshot of his creative process for the photo above.

I was born in Winnipeg, the son of an Irish father and a Filipino mother. I used to joke that I have a strong propensity to clean your house and take care of your kids, but I will probably drink all of your booze and fight your neighbour. After my father died I made a conscious decision to revisit the land of my birth and try and capture my feelings of home through the lens of a camera. I waited for the middle of summer to make the drive from Vancouver to Winnipeg to get the prairie colours I longed for. As I drove through the mountains, past Calgary and into the heart of southern Alberta, I watched the outside temperature on the dash steadily climb. 34, 38, 42.... surely that can’t be right. “Oh well” I thought to myself as I sang along to 80’s New Age music, “no big whoop. My silky Filipino blood was made for this weather” and I continued the search for the landscapes I wanted to photograph.

As I neared Taber, Alberta, out of the corner of my eye I saw a lone abandoned house in the middle of a field about a kilometre off the road. Looking at the homestead straight on you could see through the front door and out the back door. With the wide open horizon surrounding it I knew I had found what I was looking for. I parked my car, packed up my camera and tripod and hiked through the field towards the shack. Halfway there I remember thinking that I should probably have some sunscreen on my bald head. I quickly discarded that thought as lunacy as my Filipino skin would simply absorb the UV and give me a nice bronze hue, and continued on.

The photograph was made before I moved to medium format so to get the resolution I wanted I used an old ‘shift’ lens that allowed me to stitch three photographs together seamlessly to turn my 20MP camera into a 45MP beast. Each exposure was 8 minutes to make sure the wisps of clouds disappeared in the final image. I stood in that field for about an hour and a half without water, sunscreen or shade. After the first 30 minutes I realized that I had stopped sweating and a quick check of the temperature on my phone said 46.... 46!!!! It was then that I realized that my velvety smooth Filipino blood had been replaced sometime in my early thirties with my thick, maple syrup, Irish blood, and that there would be no bronzing of skin. Only scorching. Betrayed by my Irish heritage, and baking like a potato I hurriedly made my way back to my wheels.

Once back to my car I quickly took off the jeans I was wearing to put on shorts at which point I noticed two important things. One, I had just stepped on a nail, and two there was a wood tick buried in my upper thigh. On the verge of passing out I managed to dig the bastard out with a knife, poured some alcohol on my foot and wrapped it, cranked the AC and drove to Swift Current where I quickly got a room and crashed for 8 hours. Four litres of water, a few bags of ice, and some rest and I was ready to get back at it.

Kevin’s hard-won photographs are visually striking, but more importantly, they create a tremendous amount of space for the viewer to explore their subtle thoughts and feelings. He may drop hints about climate change, urbanization, or social pressures, but those suggestions are just the tip of the iceberg. Our own discoveries await.

This week’s behind the scenes images...

It’s a privilege to be in your inbox and I hope I’m offering some value. If you’ve come this far thank you for coming along for the ride.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, please let me know!

All my best to you and yours,

Sage

Hello! Sage here again with a big thank you to everyone who has written to me about these blog posts. It’s wonderful to get the feedback and get a sense of who is reading out there in the wilds.

If you’ve stuck with me these last few weeks, some of you may be wondering who I am. So I thought I’d take a little time today to introduce myself.

I came to work for David in 2011, primarily as a specialist in metal fabrication and finishing. I was also bringing along some skills in project management, AutoCAD drafting, photography, and more, so I began looking for opportunities to deploy my abilities in the service of the studio. My role quickly grew. In the last five years, I’ve done almost no hands-on work. I’ve relied on our skilled production staff to help David in the shop while I’ve expanded our scope and vision - paving the way for David to take on more ambitious projects such as Windward Calm.

David and I often use the old clichéd right-brain/left-brain analogy to describe our working relationship. I offer continuity and stability to ground his impulsive creativity. Most of the big decisions happen after much discussion, through a meandering procedure that makes ambiguous who had which idea and who decided what.

Many of you have probably heard that the ubiquitous ideas about left and right brain characteristics have actually been debunked. I don’t know the current standing of the research, but I can say that both David and I are fascinated by the arguments put forth in Iain McGilchrist’s book The Master and His Emissary. An engaging animated summary can be seen here. It argues that the left hemisphere uses a focussed, reductive, compartmentalized mode of attention, while the right hemisphere uses a broad, holistic, and integrated mode of attention. The latter, it turns out, is better poised to discern truth and deploy wisdom.

David first came across these ideas when McGilchrist spoke at a Laing Lecture at Regent College in 2016. These ideas directly contributed to the development of David’s 2018 piece Corpus Callosum:

A sculpture studio is an exceptional context for exploring these different modes. Sculpture is logistically complex - especially sculpture such as David’s, that uses so many different materials and processes. The right materials, the right supply chains, the right order-of-operations, the right distribution - turning David’s ideas into concrete works out in the world requires a great deal of rational thought and focussed attention. But at its heart is the creative inspiration, the connectivity, the muse. Our studio needs to embrace both sides of this equation and have them work in concert. Rightly balanced, the functional execution will be in service of the creative vision, and my contributions will be in service of David’s practice.

Each in our own way, David and I flow between attention states that privilege fine detail or big-picture perspectives, and intuition or reason. And while we are very (very!) different, we are good “dance partners” in managing the studio. In a nod to this metaphor, one of his nicknames for me is “Fred”, because, with his red hair, he’s obviously Ginger…

Working with David and helping to produce and share his work is a privilege. I feel honoured to spend my days doing something that I believe in.

Next week I’m hoping to bring you some insights from some other artists in the community. And as always, if you have particular comments or questions, please let me know!

I’ll leave you with a few more behind the scenes images...

As always, we at the studio wish you good health, inspiration and some measure of stability during this difficult time.

Warm wishes,

Sage

Welcome! Sage here with studio blog #3.

David’s approach to his work might best be described as listening. He works with an abiding sense that the physical matter in hand has a voice of its own that rewards close attention. One of his artist statements, which can be read in its entirety here, explores this influence, and highlights the notion of surface tension:

“Surface tension is a molecular economy of particles tending toward an inherent order - an ideal form. What is surprising about this is that it is a physical property of inert matter that looks, for all the world, like some kind of microcosmic aesthetic preference.”

This observation comes from David’s felt sense that matter brings its own intelligence to the art-making process - a feeling that lends a sort of reverence to his working process. More recently he expanded upon that:

“I think the thermal resin figures are probably the first in which I became kind of engrossed in pursuing the harmonies and simultaneous contrast of material surface tension and anatomical construction. Like a kid obsessed with pushing together two repelling magnets - you recognize that they are of a kind, and their perfect counter-tension becomes kind of mesmerizing.”

David cycles between many different materials to model his sculptures. Water clay, oil clay, plaster, thermal resin, paper and cardboard, even driftwood and plastic cutlery have been transformed into works of art. Even when the sculpture is ultimately cast in bronze, the originating material has a profound influence on the forms. Considered only from a stylistic perspective, this diverse body of work can seem incohesive:

But viewed as a conversation between the artistic impulse and the inherent properties of each material used, these varied works speak the same language.

That’s not a casual analogy. He once wrote:

“Activities of the day were collecting a new load of driftwood sinuations, and later doing a bit of freestyle writing. These respective activities yielded an epiphany when I saw that those swirling flotsam forms give me the same joy, savor, and bite in the mind’s teeth as words do. They are sweet to the hand just as language hefts upon the tongue…”

I think this points to a beautiful sort of synesthesia in David’s brain - he remains oriented towards that which moves, flows, connects - the play between words more than the words themselves - the gesture more than the body - the understanding betwixt the artwork and the observer more than the artist’s intent.

As he recently put it to me, “Loving the microcosmos of materiality-between-thumb and -forefinger as much as the relatively macro dynamics of the figure, well, it makes for a kind of perennial reverie… Always getting lost in the forest because of your love of trees…”

I hope wherever you are, and however your current days are filled, you can find some measure of that same absorption.

Sincerely,

Sage

Hello, Sage here again with #2 in our studio blog series. My sincere thanks to all of you who reached out to let me know this project was of value to you. Hopefully I can keep it up!

Bowen, the beloved therapy dog of the studio, makes his mark not only with humourous silhouettes, but with a gentle energy and quiet presence. He makes us all feel loved, and with the nudge of his head against our hands reminds us to express our own love in return.

I thought I’d ramble briefly today about that same exchange in the context of creative practice.

At first glance an artist’s legacy may seem more tangible than most. The artifacts they create and leave behind are (typically) material, and we love them for that. Aesthetics, after all, require our senses. But what is the nature of our experience when we engage with art? What do we take away from the interaction - how are we changed by it? Viewed through that lens, an artist’s legacy is ultimately unknowable.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once said “Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.” This is as true for those who approach an artwork as it is for the artist.

Those who have used their hands to create know that it is a particular joy to look down at the end of a session, and regard that which is now there only by virtue of their work. Strangely, and thankfully, that satisfaction need not depend on the skill employed, or the result. The act of creation is intrinsically pleasurable.

In times like these, even making bread and polishing boots are ways for us all to be “collaborators in creation”. And so too is seeking out creatives’ work and engaging with it - after all, in the process you are actively constructing their legacies in the medium of your own experience.

At the end of this email I’ll link some resources - a few creative sharings you might enjoy, plus something you can do to help the creative community in this time.

Geist is a piece that has taken on a new resonance these past weeks. Created in 2010, its kite-flying figure is wearing a gas mask.

To my mind it’s a beautiful illustration of a disturbing juxtaposition - the very air he must protect against remains an uplifting force. The lone figure conjures wind, breath, spirit - inhabiting the scant realm between the curving dome of the sky and the swelling round of the earth.

David has been inspired by many Bruce Cockburn songs over the years, and Radium Rain was probably among the inspirations for this piece. The lyric “filled with nostalgia for a clean wind’s kiss” certainly seems fitting.

Is that remaining sense of play a foolhardy denial of a grim reality? Or is it a triumph of the spirit? In our current moment, what does this piece say to you?

Next week I plan to focus more specifically on some of the methods and intuitions of David’s art practice. If you have any questions you’d like me to address, send them along and I’ll try to answer them.

This week’s behind-the-scenes images...

A few parting resources and links...

I was delighted to discover a couple nights back that many musicians on Instagram are using the #livefromhome hashtag to share music across the void. I don’t think you need an IG account to click through this photo to hear Sara Bareilles singing the Mary Oliver poem I Have Just Said.

If you have more time than usual for podcasts I highly recommend On Being with Krista Tippett. These are beautiful long-form conversations with inspiring, thoughtful people. Every conversation is released in both edited and unedited versions. I prefer the unedited, though for musical guests (such as Yo-Yo Ma) I will re-listen to the edited version since they splice in audio referenced in the conversation. In their words, “On Being, as it has evolved, takes up the great questions of meaning in 21st-century lives and at the intersection of spiritual inquiry, science, social healing, and the arts. What does it mean to be human, how do we want to live, and who will we be to each other?”

Click the photo to visit Google’s Arts & Culture collection to view museums, galleries and landmarks all over the world. The navigation can be a bit clunky, but I found a bit of digging revealed some wonderful features, including high-definition photos of works that let you zoom waaaay in to see detail.

Finally, if you’re a Vancouverite who believes that some public funding for arts and culture is a good idea, consider clicking this image to learn more about voicing your support for the 2020 Cultural Grants. I believe the council vote is this Tuesday the 31st, so time is of the essence.

Thank you all for joining me again this week. From everyone here (non-simultaneously) at the studio, we wish you good health and inspiration all week long.

Hello, my name is Sage and I work with David Robinson in his sculpture studio.

In these strange times I have been inspired by the outpouring of support and goodwill in our communities. While there are real fears and concerns in our lives, I feel lucky to be immersed in a community of artists. In times like these, many creatives experience a very real silver-lining in isolation, and the opportunity to focus more on creating.

I thought some of you - especially if you are at home, self-isolating - might enjoy a taste of that spark, a glimpse of studio life, plus a little art in your inbox.

There are many things in flux, but if you enjoy this email, let me know, and I’ll try to make it a series. Some of what I’ll share is current, and some are snapshots I’ve collected in my ~10 years at the studio.

Thank you for coming along for the ride, and feel free to ask questions for the next edition!

All my best to you,

Sage

Over the last year, I’ve heard David speak about the way his experience of installing Windward Calm at VGH has shifted his feelings about how his work can interact with the community at large. I know he had hoped that piece would resonate with the patients there, but he’s been truly humbled by the actual feedback we’ve received. I suspect that this new work-in-progress has been informed by a desire to be of further service to those who need support at a difficult time.

Over the last several weeks he’s been developing this piece, inspired by those incredible organizations that support families with sick children. His vision is to create it in a life-sized scale, and install it where it can be of comfort to these families. The figures’ hands are arranged such that visitors can light a candle and have these figures hold it and keep vigil with them.

This piece by Henry Moore has been one of David’s key references for his sculpture:

Every holiday season, David turns a selection of his sketches into cards for his staff. I received this one a few years back during a time that we had been having some conversations about the nature of faith. Faith can mean a lot of things in different contexts. In a “post-truth” age, we make important decisions about things like social-distancing based on a whole range of good and bad data, even knowing that we won’t always know which is which.

I have a favourite quote about faith: “The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty”. I looked it up today and discovered that it continues: “Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. Faith also means reaching deeply within, for the sense one was born with, the sense, for example, to go for a walk.” Anne Lamott’s words seem especially poignant today.

Last year this sketch developed into a new piece for David’s exhibition Shadows of Doubt. Some of you may recognize Portal:

The title was partly inspired by Eric Weinstein talking about a concept he refers to as “The Portal”. Weinstein describes our recurring narrative theme of a threshold between worlds - the wardrobe to Narnia, the rabbit hole to Wonderland, the platform 9-3/4 to Hogwart’s. More “adult” myths feature similar portals out of a mundane world and into a transformative adventure. He expresses that he believes this myth is a metaphor for a very real phenomenon, and our lives are better-lived by staying alert to the possibility that a transformative reality could be opened to us at any moment. David saw a video to this effect as he was creating this piece.

Seeing these ideas develop over time in the studio is one of the most exciting elements of my work here. I hope, if you enjoy these emails, that I can share a bit more about what it’s like behind the scenes.

I’ll leave you today with a few images I’ve collected from the around the studio over the years...

From everyone here at the studio, we wish you good health and a full heart.

This work takes for its paradigm the ubiquitous sculptural guardian figures that stand astride the thresholds of every urban culture. From the imperial guardian lions of China, to the telamons of European architecture, it is the myriad figural motif of the architectural sentinel. Whether gatekeeper, gargoyle, hero, patron or saint, these effigies adorn and preside over the threshold between outer and inner spaces, between realms secular and sacred, between modes of life, public and private.

The work here has elected the anachronistic image of the ceremonial standard-bearer. Rendered in the bronze of a sinuous and classical affiliation, and within the western tradition of the allegorical nude, this stout cultural marker of the garrison, the tribe, the nation is here somewhat unraveled.

Away from the portrayal of the ever-wakeful sentinel, this stalwart is depicted in a state of slumber. We encounter a threshold sentry, himself at the threshold between states of consciousness. Between, perhaps, that state of mind ever watchful of the stranger and the dream state that can give impetus to a change of heart and mind. And above him, hovering like a thought-bubble, his tribal banner and standard is bound and obscured, as it is subsumed and rendered a cipher for the cosmopolitan ethos.