Artist Statement
Nothing new has been made without faith. Nothing unseen has been seen without work. Imagination communicates, as Arthur Danto says, "indefinable but inescapable truth." I am daily drawn to the incarnation theology where Christ initiated, identified and invaded but then invited others along. I am a simple storyteller of faith and work. I continue to be influenced by great authors, such as C.S. Lewis, Homer, and J.R.R. Tolkien, and different passages of scripture from the ESV Bible. My work is allegorical, matching the stories of literature to the sculpture. When one comes into the presence of my sculpture, there is a feeling of danger, as well as simultaneous feelings of fear and of joy. Through this, one learns that something can be both terrible and beautiful. I would like to think that the language in my work speaks to the strangers and sojourners. Living in a world of critics, there are many obstacles that can distort the truth. As singer and songwriter Drew Holcomb sings, “Go slay all the dragons that stand in your way”. In order to experience joy, one must be willing to accept fear as an inevitability. I hope that you will experience what makes you fearful yet fascinated, awed yet attracted to the powerful personal feeling of being overwhelmed and inspired at the same time. -Robert Sanders
The sculptures by Robert Sanders continue the legacy of the art of assemblage that played such an important part in the early history on Modernism. I remember encountering Sanders human scale sculpture Fellowship of Greif, that was placed in the hallway outside of his small studio in the HBU’s University Academic Center and immediately thinking “assemblage art is still alive”. The art of sculpture in the 20th Century found some of the more adventuresome artists abandoning their hammers and chisels for the welding torch. Carving into stone and wood was replaced by the reassembling of machine parts. Think of Joan Miro and his assemblage sculptures; Like his 1967 Woman with Jug that includes a piece of broken pottery for one arm and a metal spoon for the other arm (this assemblage was finished as a cast bronze sculpture) or Miro’s famous pure assemblage of natural materials, L’ Objet du Couchant of 1936 that so drove the imagination of the Surrealists. Sanders’ art continues in that spirit. Sanders’ smaller works, the Future Glories, (Transfigure Glory, Glory Devine, Haunting Glory, etc.) are playful and whimsical, and are successful in that they say just enough. They are like little sculptural poems, leaving the viewer with the possibility of coming up with their own assessments from a contemplation of their assembled parts.
Jim Edwards, is an artist, expert art writer and curator, and an authority on American art of the southwest
San Francisco, California, October 21, 2020