SP-D-9 Sculpture

Artist Statement"”Robert Boyd For as long as I can remember I have been interested in art and design. It probably grew out of my discovery at an early age that I had the ability to draw credible likenesses of objects. I compulsively sketched, doodled and created three dimensional constructions from cardboard and corrugated paper. Inasmuch as this was my major interest and talent, art more or less became my identity. I think it is also fortunate that I grew up in Wisconsin, not far from Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin. Discovering his architecture at about age eight, I was awakened to the realization that really exceptional design can be magically good, possessing a quality that can't be simply reduced to a set of rules or perhaps even defined by words. Why do a few designs "sing" while most barely hum along? I think that question defines my aesthetic aspirations. Though I received formal art training at University of Wisconsin-Platteville, I think most of my art education has been self-directed, accumulating a large reference library focusing on the work and experiences of the artists, architects and industrial designers whose work I most admired. I think I was born with a compulsion to create, to design and redesign everything in my world. Much of my professional life has been spent in teaching and product design, and I think my art is the logical outcome of my life experiences, a work in progress. I make art to satisfy my own creative impulse and for the visual and tactile enjoyment of others. --Robert Boyd