January 2018 – Cre8-Space

Mike Padian, Watercolorist

Mike Padian’s watercolor abilities were the best kept secret in Black Canyon City… until now. He’s mastered the medium, and life.

Watercolor Wizard

I met Mike last spring at a cooking class taught by Matt, French chef and owner of Nora Jean’s Koffee Kitchen; the second-best kept secret in Black Canyon City.

Mike’s talent as a watercolorist was the best kept secret.

During the monthly classes, where a group of wanna-be chefs try our hands at classic French dishes crafted with Matt’s imaginative twists, I’m always drawn to Mike, his sunny nature, quick smiles and absolute delight in the color, texture and chemistry of veggies, oils, meats and spices.

Delight. That’s Mike.

When I learned Mike painted watercolors, and asked him about it during class, he was standing behind a chair, hands resting on its back. Folks at our table were busy shoving haricots cooked with slivered almonds and garlic mashed potatoes into our mouths as Mike modestly said, “Yes, I paint watercolors.”

He mentioned being mystified by people who master oil painting. Soon, I’d learn just how modest Mike was being.

Last November, Black Canyon City hosted its third annual Hidden in the Canyon self-guided art studio tour. The weekend event included six artist studios in the small city. Each studio hosted multiple artists working in various mediums. When my husband Brent and I learned of the artist tour, we were in!

Most importantly, whatever studio Mike was exhibiting in would be our first stop.

Mike, along with a jewelry maker, glass artist and ceramicist, was showing his work in Lori M’s beautiful home, practically a museum of paintings, sculptures, ceramics, multi-media pieces and furniture by many artists; all tasteful and arranged for living with, not just looking at.

Lori is Black Canyon City’s patron saint of art patrons and she’s a huge Mike Padian fan.

“Wow,” Brent said when we first saw Mike’s watercolors, set up in Laura’s dining room, just off the patio. “Who knew he was this good?”

I had suspected Mike’s talent was great. But, the details… the colors. How was he able to so deftly manipulate colored water, the slipperiest of all media?

We immediately selected a small, rectangular landscape in a complementary frame and bought it. Fast. Before someone else did.

Lori, the homeowner, is a pretty woman, dark shiny hair, who was adorned in eclectic necklaces, bracelets and earrings made by local artists, each piece revealing her taste and personality.

“Since you bought a painting from Mike,” Lori said, “I want to show you something.”

She turned and removed a chair that blocked visitors from entering her living room. I felt like we had won the lottery as we followed Laura on our mysterious journey through her treasure-filled home. I found it difficult to walk forward because my head was constantly turning to take in each large painting, or sculptured figure or carved wall-hanging. Surprisingly, I didn’t bump into Lori, and Brent didn’t bump into me, when Lori stopped outside the closed door to her bedroom.

Drum roll, please. My head was actually buzzing with anticipation when we stepped into her room and our eyes immediately went to the mural over Lori’s metal bed, a faux window filled with a colorful Sonoran Desert scene.

“What?!” is all I could say. Vaguely, I sensed Mike’s presence, but all my attention was on the gorgeous, red-blooming Ocotillo, white-tipped wildflowers and stately Saguaros showing through the optical illusion of a deep-set window.

Brent leaned over the bed to put his hand on the fake window sill and exclaimed, “I thought it was a real window ledge!”

The entire wall was painted to look like plaster, cracked in some places. Right then, I knew I had to feature Mike on this blog.

Lori beamed, clearly proud and in awe of Mike’s extraordinary talent. There was a hint of tears as she said, “The only reason I agreed to host artists in my home today is because of Mike.”

Lori knew something that would take me a little longer to figure out. Mike’s entire life had been spent making art, in one physical way or another, and sharing its beauty with people.

On a Saturday afternoon in December, I visited Mike in his home and began to put the pieces together, the ones Lori was already intimately familiar with, the ones that could bring tears of sadness and joy.

Mike’s home behind Ron’s Market is wooden, narrow and deep, reminiscent of shotgun houses found in the Deep South where I’m from. Cozy and inviting, each room is well-appointed and a reflection of Mike; his interests, his passions.

“I like my house,” he says simply.

His “Happy Wall” in the dining room has a kayak and paddles resting in a corner, a row of carefully arranged beer glasses, and a long, perfectly-executed oil painting, one of Mike’s masterpieces, of the Dirty Devil River, a tributary of Lake Powell. “The Dirty Devil only gets enough flow for kayaking five days out of the year,” Mike said. “We had a blast for a week on this river.”

Mike likes his beer/ale/lager dark and stout. In fact, he finishes a pint as we begin our tour of his home, and pours a new one.

“Would you like one?” he asks. A beer is tempting, but I say no. I must remain sharp and focused so I can remember everything he says.

Next to the refrigerator is a mound of empty beer bottles tucked into cases stacked one on the other. I stare at the pile.

“Don’t judge,” Mike says.

“I’m not judging,” I say. “Brent plans to build a greenhouse with walls of colored bottles. He’s not interested in brown bottles, so I’m just checking out how many clear and colored bottles you have.”

“I didn’t just drink all of those,” Mike says, still concerned I’m judging. “I’ve been saving them for a while.”

I’m truly not judging Mike, about anything. In fact, as we talk through the afternoon and explore his watercolors of all shapes and sizes, framed on the wall or tucked into boxes under tables, my high estimation of him steadily and steeply rises.

As we talk about his life, and painting, we pull out more and more pieces, each distinct and breath-taking. Mike knows the geographic location of each landscape, even those from his imagination. I feel like a gold miner striking a vein and can’t get enough. “Bring it on,” I say, when he remembers another stash.

Some of the framed watercolors reflect light from windows, which can be seen in the photographs we’re taking. Instead of going through the trouble of taking the paintings out of their frames, we pull them off the wall, prop them up and Mike stands across the room with a giant piece of cardboard, moving it up or down, right or left, according to my directions, attempting to block light from over the kitchen sink or through the sliding glass doors. It’s rather comical and the photos don’t turn, of course. They look like stars shooting out of desert rocks.

But that’s okay. Mike hands me a CD labeled “MIKE PADIAN’S PAINTINGS” and I happily discover these very framed masterpieces are quality jpegs on the CD.

In his studio, Mike and I excitedly arrange his library of unframed watercolors, one by one, on a white background and take photographs, me feeling like an amateur photographer next to the master. Like the guy who washed Michelangelo’s paint brushes, or brought him a sandwich.

‘Don’t judge,’ I think as I try to capture each piece of artwork with just the right light at just the right angle.

Distortions would be bad; I want to be true to Mike’s art. And to Mike.

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Mike created his first painting at the age of nine. “It was large,” Mike says, “and Mother still has it.”

For 23 years, painting billboards 48-feet long was all in a day’s work for Mike. He painted 10-foot tall Big Macs, giant portraits of Phoenix newscasters and naked women. Well, he only painted naked women on Fridays as a practical joke for his boss, Don Weber; on Monday, Mike would paint clothes on the women before the billboards were hung in public.

10-Foot tall Big Mac sitting in the workshop

Mike admits that at 5′ 4″, he’s not a big man, so it’s ironic he created such massive artwork. “We used a projector,” Mike says, “to create enlarged sketches that I then painted in with detail. We had to paint quickly, too, because time was money.”

After billboard painting, Mike began a mural painting business in 2003. One day in 2004, he found out he needed a heart transplant… right away.

“In the emergency room, the doctor asked how many heart episodes I’d had, and I told him two. He said, ‘most people die on the third one,’ so I immediately went on the donor list, knowing that my small heart cavity meant I’d need the heart from a small woman or child.” The doctors gave Mike seven days to live.

A heart became available on Day Five.

These days, if you ask Mike how he’s doing, his face lights up as he says, “Great! Can’t complain.” If anyone has a right to complain, it’s Mike. The medicines necessary these many years to keep his body from rejecting the donor heart have damaged his health in significant ways. However, Mike chooses laughter over the alternative; curling up in a fetal position and dropping out.

Besides, Mike is too busy preparing for art shows and spending time with his brother Ron, who lives nearby, and crafting exquisite culinary dishes for his mother and stepfather; like Madeira sauce with tarragon and mushrooms.

While Mike focuses on watercolor painting, folks continue to fall in love with him and his work… it’s simply impossible not to!

In the short time Mike painted murals around Phoenix, he was kept busy by quite a few customers. For his favorite client, Mike painted Davinci’s Last Supper on the man’s dining room wall, a John Force funny car mural in his home office and a movie-themed mural of vintage film posters surrounded by popcorn and movie reels on the wall over his TV.

“My client called me this past December and told me he painted over the Last Supper mural,” Mike chuckles. “I mean, it was his to paint over. Now he wants me to paint a scene with the Ten Commandments’ stone tablets, maybe with Mt. Sinai in the background.”

Mike’s mural work, like the one in Laura’s bedroom, is stunning and often contains T’rompe-l’oeil (French for “deceive the eye”), imagery that creates an optical illusion of objects existing in three dimensions. In homes, Mike has painted windows with desert scenes, extended hallways, floral trims and scroll work. He even painted a space-themed mural for a phone store.

The real hallway ends just after the hanging lamp. Everything beyond that point is illusion.

LEARNING TO PAINT ON A LARGE SCALE

Mike grew up in Phoenix and graduated from Moon Valley High School in 1976. He started painting billboards and signs one year later.

“At first, I was sloping panels and cleaning up messes. My boss said I should learn how to draw letters to scale, and once I had experience doing letters, I could paint billboards.”

Mike took a lettering class at Maricopa County College. Back then, all lettering was drawn out by hand using math to determine spacing, letter widths and heights. Every step was manual, no computers. After a year of lettering, Mike began painting his own billboards and over the next two decades, learned on-the-job.

Painting giant faces on billboards was difficult because Mike was too close to see the entire face. To compensate, he developed a system of dotted lines to identify where he was on the face.

Mike’s dotted lines on a billboard face from the 80s.

“A line of long dashes meant a long blend,” Mike says. “Shorter dashes meant a short blend of colors and shadows, and dots represented things I needed to change. For instance, I would outline eyes in dots and knew I needed to go outside of those lines.”

Mike educated himself in the Venyetti effect, a phenomenon that causes proportions to distort when an image is enlarged. “Venyetti effect is especially critical when painting large objects on billboards,” Mike says. “A one percent distortion, or difference in size, can change the entire face.” Painting a huge face might have taken Mike an entire day. He didn’t want to have to redo the whole thing by not taking potential distortions into account.

Mike mostly painted billboards on the ground in a giant studio, though sometimes he would need to climb up on the catwalk and paint from there, which was dangerous for obvious reasons. While most billboards were 14-feet high and 48-feet long, some had 16- or 17-foot high extensions, making them mega-tall billboards.

Mike paints high in the air, under the desert sun.

Not only could rain ruin the paint on an outdoor job, the chance of falling was ever-present. In fact, Mike fell twice. Once when working with his boss, Don, on a billboard on Grand Avenue near the train tracks. They were standing on the catwalk when a board snapped and they both fell 15 feet. Mike landed in a barbed wire fence and got hung up. Don hit a truck and bounced onto Mike, then walked away unscathed, saying, “That’s what a good apprentice is for. Thanks, Mike.”

Even while bloodied with mud packed in his nose, Mike climbed back up and continued the job.

In the early 1990’s, with the advent of computers and big ink printers capable of producing large vinyl pieces, printing raced to overtake hand-painting. Within a decade, hand-painting would be gone.

“In the early days of printed billboards, the inks were inferior,” Mike says, “and our clients thought it looked awful. They would ask us to fix it. I had to match the dot matrix with a solid paint color, which was very difficult to do, all the while standing on the catwalk. To check my work, I’d have to climb down, run back to look at it, and then climb back up again.”

Around 1999, Mike decided he no longer wanted to be a billboard monkey, stretching vinyl, fixing bad print jobs and climbing up and down. It was simply too dangerous.

WORDS AND IMAGES

Mike’s artistic skills are broader than painting. He has always written poetry, lyrics and articles for magazines. During the 1980s and 1990s, while Mike painted billboards, he also ran his own stock photography company. Drawn to recreational sports and the outdoors, Mike took photos of models while kayaking, snow skiing, mountain biking and hiking. He catalogued the photos for use by publications and also sent monthly submissions to outdoor magazines and visitor guides.

In addition to publishing photos, Mike occasionally wrote pieces for Bike magazine, Mt. Bike magazine and National Geographic Explorer magazine. He honed his writing chops with Sweat Magazine.

Here’s an excerpt from an article Mike photographed and wrote for Bike magazine about the Five Miles of Hell (5MOH) trail system in Utah. The intro reads, “In this part of Utah, west and north of Moab’s storied red rocks, there’s a trail with a cruel name and a brutal reputation. To ride it, torture is salvation, punishment the prize.”

“What 5MOH lacks in epic length, it makes up for in the fatigue per mile it doles out. While it might not have breathtaking vistas, traveling among the tightly sculpted sandstone creases has an almost mystical appeal. There are no zen-inducing climbs or vision-blurring descents, but 5MOH holds the needle in the red on the pucker-meter by requiring the rider to show utter conviction in the two simplest of disciplines… letting the bike do everything it is built to do and forcing the bike to do what it needs to do.”

A spread of Mike’s article with photos of his model.

Mike’s ex-wife, Jill, published a piece in Bike magazine about Mike’s stock photography adventures titled People Who Ride. Here’s an excerpt:

“Then there was the time he came home two hours late and parked his truck in front of the house but didn’t get out. He just sat there. I kept working at my desk, figuring he was jamming to a song on the radio. Finally, a plaintive bleating of the truck horn awakened me to the fact that all was not right in the world of Kodachrome.

I found him naked except for a beer in his hand. That position was all the better for the setting sun to glint off the cactus prickers stuck all over his legs and buttocks, allowing me to find and pluck them from his body with tweezers. As I performed the delicate surgery, he of course fumed about the shots he’d missed.”

Mike doesn’t take up a lot of space in this world. He doesn’t push his ways on those around him. He’s gentle, unless conquering a river or landscape, either in kayaks, on bikes or with watercolors. He’s thoughtful. For instance, as a stock photographer, he would sometimes urge his clients to give their business to another stock photographer, one who was making a living at it, unlike Mike, who had his full-time job of painting billboards. Mike is considerate of others, sometimes to his own deprivation. But that’s who Mike is.

In 2005, Mike donated 4,000 of his stock photos of Downtown Phoenix to the city archives. He estimates 12,000 slides of outdoor recreational photos are currently stored in his art studio. “They’re outdated,” Mike says. I try to convince him publications would find value in those scenes, which could be considered vintage by now. Everything vintage is “in” these days. Besides, shot through his artistic eye, and on film nonetheless, these thousands of photos are pure Mike Padian Art.

WATERCOLOR

Watercolor is Mike’s medium of choice, and desert landscapes are his forte.

“Some people don’t like working with watercolors because they’re hard to manipulate,” Mike says. “People get frustrated at how difficult it can be to place the color exactly where they want it. But that’s what I love about it. It’s such a thrill when the colors go into place and turn out as I’d imagined.”

The “imagining” is Mike’s favorite part of the process. He uses an engineering approach to carefully plan exactly how he’ll apply colors in layers to create the image in his head. He will spend time thinking and strategizing before ever putting brush to paper.

Once his strategy is in place, Mike can create a painting in a day, including time for drying between layers. “I’ll paint the sky,” Mike says, “then I’ll wash dishes while it dries.”

“I’m self-taught,” Mike says. “I’ve learned from a lot of people by listening. I’m never too proud to attend a demonstration or a class. And I’ve studied light my whole life.”

In one class, Mike had an epiphany. “You must look past what you’re looking at to see the true colors,” Mike says. “An instructor in Sedona showed us how to look through a small hole punched into cardboard to view the object and see the colors as they really are.”

Nature can be a powerful teacher, too. “I hadn’t understood hot and cool in colors until one day I was hiking, not really thinking about painting, when I saw the sun burn around—and appear to nearly burn through—a saguaro. I was able to then see the orange and red, purple and blue in the rocks.”

Mike uses his knowledge of photography to enhance his eye for painting. “In photography, you must trick the camera into seeing the colors in the shadows, make lighter spots more light, and it works with painting, too.”

Years ago, Mike used black in his watercolors. “I don’t use black as a darkening agent anymore,” Mike says. “I’m able to manipulate my color pallet to get good dark colors without black.”

Mike had always painted from photographs, but after his heart transplant, he began to make up images in his head. Eventually, he began plein air painting, which is now his preference. Attending the Moab Plein Air Festival in Utah is one of his favorite past-times.

“They have competitions within a certain geographic area and you’re given a time frame for completing a painting and framing it,” Mikes says. He’s won several awards for various competitions, including Plein Air.

Mike’s Awards

First Place – Water media, 2014 Escalante Plein Air
Second Place – Water Media, 2013 Moab Plein Air Festival
First Place – Water Media, 2012 Moab Plein Air Festival
Honorable Mention – 2011, 36th Annual Western Federation of Watercolor Societies
Award of Excellence, 2011 AZ Watercolor Association Spring Exhibit
Purchase Selection – 2010 Watercolor West Juried Exhibit
Merchant Award – 2009 AZ Watercolor Association Spring Exhibit
Award of Excellence – 2008 AZ Watercolor Association Fall Exhibit

He enjoys the process of painting, it makes him happy, especially when he tries a new technique and it works. “It feeds my soul,” Mike says.

“You know, one painting represents four paintings, because three other paintings didn’t turn out exactly right. They had some glitch, but that happens working with any medium. Just the process itself, many times a painting doesn’t work out.”

Mike keeps the ones that don’t turn out and he’ll use the back for experimenting with colors. “I’ll rip up the really bad ones, though,” he admits, laughing.

His work space is simple and not crowded with paints, paper or other supplies. He works with only a few small tubes of paint or watercolors. “I’m not a supply hoarder. It’s funny to have so few supplies because when I was painting murals, I bought paints by the pint or gallons.”

One raised drawing table, a work table and shelving occupy Mike’s creative space. Here he sketches and paints with his film cameras snugly stored in a nearby closet. Mike’s studio is at the back of his house. Soft light filters through the blinds. It’s quiet. A perfect spot to contemplate/engineer his paintings.

Mike sells his paintings through art shows, word of mouth, Sho ‘N Tell retail space in Rock Springs, and in the upstairs gallery at the Rock Springs Cafe. He has a devoted following, which now includes me and Brent. To give back, Mike donates paintings for various fundraisers around Phoenix.

Painting and preparing gourmet meals hasn’t been Mike’s only creative outlets, though. He’s also built a house and drummed.

Starting in 2000, for 53 weeks Mike and his then-wife of 25 years, Jill, built a home in Black Canyon City. Mike took a year off of work and acted as general contractor. He also did much of the on-hands work, including drywall, finishing, installing windows and logging his own timber from the Mogollon rim to hewn into vegas for his patio. Vegas are logs used as posts on patios or as architectural features indoors, perhaps to emphasize entry space between rooms.

Unfortunately, Mike went into the hospital for the heart transplant in 2004.

In his younger days, Mike played the drums, preferring to perform progressive rock by groups like Gentle Giant, Gong and Yes. But a couple of times, he was asked to sit in with a Country & Western band to play for residents of Shangri La, the famous nudist resort that’s been in New River, Arizona, for at least 50 years.

“I prefer rock music,” Mike says, “so I faked half of the Country & Western songs. But the crowd didn’t care. They were all just dancing in their natural glory on the tennis court, having a good time. After the first set, they started yelling for the band to take off our clothes, but we didn’t,” he laughs.

The second time the band played at Shangri-La, the bass player and guitarist dropped acid. “The guitarist went into a Jimi Hendrix riff and all these naked people stopped dancing to look at him like he was crazy.”

Most of his gigs were with professional bands and Mike even recorded in a studio; back then, it would have been on a reel-to-reel or tape cassette.

Mike’s life has always been about making art, beginning at the age of eight with painting, then as a billboard painter right out of high school, and eventually as a stock photographer, writer, drummer, gourmet cook, mural painter and watercolorist.

Mike has consistently brought beauty into the world.

“As I age,” Mike says, “I don’t need to paint every day like I used to. But I do have two compositions in my head right now and I need to draw them out, get them down on paper.”

In the last year, Mike’s painting has been overshadowed by other priorities, like going to dialysis three days a week for three-hour sessions each time.

“Dialysis isn’t awful,” Mike reassures me, “but it’s not great, either. Usually I put in ear plugs and just try to sleep through it.”

How considerate of Mike to make me and others feel better about what he has to endure. Just like he urged his clients to give other photographers their business, Mike thinks about not taking from others to give to himself. That’s why he is hesitant to seek donor kidneys; he speculates there’s a chance he might only live for two more years with new kidneys, which would take kidneys away from someone else who might live longer. I try to argue the point but Mike is following a deeply-ingrained moral imperative. That’s who he is. And that’s why I respect him.

“I have to make a decision, though,” Mike says. “I need to decide soon if I’m going to move forward with kidney transplants.”

One thing’s for sure, Mike is ready to crank up his painting again, dialysis sessions and moral dilemmas be damned!

“With everything I’ve studied, I haven’t mastered any of it, just figured things out. I was never a great biker or kayaker or skier or photographer. I’ve done everything half-assed, except for painting. I think I’ve finally mastered watercolor.”

Indeed, he has.

GALLERY

Rob Cobasky, Sculptor

“Each figure is a character and I can you tell you their story,” Rob says about this army of 18-inch zombie warriors and skeletal cowboys, some with long, hooked noses and gnarled fingers, others with half-skeletal faces, all with a determined look to survive by wielding their “junk-yard” armor and weapons. “They all come from the School of Hard Knocks. Or else I’m purging some deep anger issues,” he laughs.

Gorgeously Grotesque

The first time I lay eyes on Rob, he’s sitting on a bench looking miserable, even though an 8-foot tall perfectly-rendered life-sized and life-like Frankenstein monster stands watch over him. Rob sits in the monster’s shadow by his tented sculpture gallery, which is sandwiched between a silversmith making exquisite contemporary pendants and earrings and a… well, I don’t see who the other artists are or what their pieces look like because once I start examining Rob’s ghoulish figures, I spend the remainder of our visit at Stop Number Five on the Hidden in the Canyon artist-studio tour amongst Rob’s macabre creatures, my mouth hanging open.

If Rob looks temporarily miserable, I think, perhaps he is feeling like a fish out of water, his artwork under-appreciated by the average visitor. Me? My mind is blown and I’m not moving on. I lean in and study each piece, a different character sculpted from Rob’s imagination. My eyes follow the intricate lines of every face, hand and piece of clothing, some of which are actual pieces of fabric. The detail is exquisite even if the features are grotesque.

Rob sculpts the small, one-of-a-kind figures in Chavant clay, and he might paint certain parts of their clothing or armament. He also casts some larger pieces in silicon, like Frankenstein, whose skin looks so real with hints of red and blue veins, pores and hair, that when the sun shines through the stretched web of his hand, it glows like a human’s. Frankenstein has eerie, sparse hair flowing over metal pieces that realistically clamp the top of his head on. Even his large, black coat and pants are worn and frayed in just the right places.

Frankenstein is marvelous, and so is Rob.

While studying the minute details of every work, all I can say is “wow” and “amazing,” yet Rob communicates beautifully about his process. When he talks about sculpting clay or casting silicon or resin, his passion is obvious; his hands dart and his eyes shine.

Not only has Rob perfected, through self-guided learning, the techniques needed to create his sculptures, he did it in his spare time while being a hair stylist the last 30 years. For 18 years, Rob owned his own shop, called Salon Designs. Now, Rob and his wife Anna, a nail artist, share space at a salon near Happy Valley and I-17 north of Phoenix. They like the arrangement. Between customers, Rob can sculpt.

“Having a sculpture at work,” Rob says, “means I can take an entire day to work on one finger!” He’s not joking. The time he spends on the tiniest of details shows up and pays off. He studies bone construction, where muscle meets bones, to craft the second-most important feature of any figure, their hands. The most important feature is, of course, the face. But the eyes Rob crafts are incredible, too. Very real and moist and just-right red.

“I’m Not lazy,” Rob says. Understatement! The amount of work he turns out is impressive, and it’s not all sculpting.

Rob built a large detached garage as his workshop. In the desert summer, when it’s too hot for the workshop, he retreats to a small room off his living room where he sits at a desk, with lots of good lighting, and sculpts, or paints, or attaches real human hair from his salon clients to his creations. The room is lined with shelves holding molds, silicon monster faces pocked with warts, and sculptures in various stages of completion. A torso sits in the center of the room, at child height, and a closet holds even more molds and heads and faces.

Rob demonstrates applying eyebrows to a silicon face. He clamps a sewing needle, point down, into an X-acto knife holder. He has nipped off the tip of the needle at the eye, leaving a u-shape in which he threads a human hair. Inserting the needle at an angle, like eyebrows naturally grow, Rob leaves the hair embedded in the brow and moves on to the next one. When all hairs are in place, he’ll trim them.

At the 2017 Arizona State Fair, Rob entered several pieces and wondered if the general public would understand his work. Well, let’s just say he swept the damn fair! And that’s after they weren’t even sure how to categorize his work. Most of his entries were listed as “Home Arts,” and the show organizer told Rob they will create a unique category for his entries in next year’s State Fair. He won two first place awards, two second place, one third place, one fourth place and a big pink ribbon for “Exceptional Merit.”

But for someone who wasn’t sure where his work belonged, the category was irrelevant. In the end, he was awarded a big purple “Best of Show” ribbon and a big purple “People’s Choice” ribbon. Rob swept the damn fair.

Rob sells his pieces through shows, galleries and retail shops, and he has a client base who buy multiple pieces to decorate their fancy homes, and who even commission work.

Rob should be a make-up artist on The Walking Dead. In fact, he was selected to work as master sculptor on an independent short horror film called The Kiss, written and directed by Remi Vaughn. Rob’s sculptures will be used as art produced by one of the main characters in this horror/psychological thriller starring Caterina Murino and Sean Patrick Flanery. The project has been stalled by budget and distribution issues, and Vaughn is re-assessing the format of telling the story. Stay up-to-date on the film by visiting www.thekiss-movie.com.

Rob also worked on Sweet, a short horror film shot in Mesa, Arizona, in 2014, about vampire cowboys based on Stephen King’s Skinner Sweet short story. Rob made the hands and face for the lead character and he also played a couple of parts. Check it out on Youtube to see his low-tech solution for having a bloody human heart beat in Sweet’s hand.

On Rob’s To-Do List is making fully-functioning hands using 3-D printed bones on which he sculpts organic-looking details. He’ll do it. Rob ultimately completes his projects, which are many. A giant T-rex head, molded from paper, masking tape and a bed sheet, rests in his workshop, waiting for final finessing. Half-completed sculptures sit here and there.

“There’s a freedom to living the dream,” Rob says, “and being able to jump from project to project.” His mood leads the way. In addition to being a great artist and a talented actor, he also has rhythm.

In his younger days, Rob was a drummer, playing in several bands, such as The Bashers and Right Side Up, rehearsing four nights a week for four hours. When his band was interviewed on TV, he was asked what he wanted to do with his career. Rob’s answer was, “Be a pilot.” He laughs remembering his answer then, which had nothing to do with music and playing in a band.

Sometimes late at night, when he’s concentrating on his art, Rob will crank up his favorite groups; Type O negative, Primed, Ozzy Osbourne or Rush.

But, Rob is as obsessed with aviation as he is with monsters and his dream to be a pilot came true. Currently, he’s building from scratch a Hummel Bird aircraft designed by Morry Hummel (of Hummel Aviation of Byran, Ohio).

Rob is crafting each piece by hand (except for the wing ribs). Otherwise, he fabricates the aluminum pieces and other parts according to detailed sketches on 40 pages of plans provided by Hummel Aviation.

“I’m cutting two cylinders off a Volkswagen engine,” Rob says. “It will be a two-cylinder, four-stroke half-VW aircraft engine, weighing about 84 pounds and ramping up to 47 horsepower.”

Rob talks about crafting a monster to sit atop his Hummel Bird airplane and then entering the plane/monster “sculpture” in next year’s Arizona State Fair. Get ready for another sweep!

One man’s daunting task is another man’s pure joy.

While flying recently, Rob had to make an emergency landing on the east side of Lake Pleasant in his Error Bike plane (which he bought already put together). The engine in the yellow and white plane ate a piston, stranding Rob at the lake. Anna came to the rescue with Rob’s hand-made boat, in which they promptly scooted across the lake to his stranded plane. He put the yellow and white plane on his wooden boat, carried it back across the lake and on to home for repair.

He’s usually quite proficient at flying. In 1999, Rob took first place at the Arizona State Aerobatic Championship.

When he’s flying, Rob will spot coyotes or interesting items he might want to pick up when he’s back on the ground. One find was an antique french door which Anna converted to a tabletop, refinished to match the table base and topped off with a thick sheet of glass. Very shabby chic.

But let’s get back to that hand-made wooden boat. Rob has made three boats in the last couple of years. The first one is a shorter version, something of a prototype with which he could experiment. When that boat turned out well, he built a larger one out of plywood.

Unfortunately, returning home from Lake Pleasant after taking the boat on its inaugural run, Rob’s truck attracted a burro like a red cape attracts a bull in Spain. Burros that live around the lake and are protected by Arizona Game and Fish are known for being testy, and vocal. They can create issues for recreation seekers like Rob. This particular male charged Rob’s truck, ran into the side of it and ended up under the boat trailer, wrecking everything and demolishing his new boat.

Shaken but not deterred, Rob built a second boat out of plywood from Home Depot. He spent $250 on supplies and proudly says, “it catches fish like a $65,000 bass boat.”

Rob grew up in Phoenix in the 1970s, riding his bike to the end of his paved road where desert started. “As a kid,” Rob says, “I loved looking at monsters in magazines, comic books and the movies.” He began sketching and sculpting in his teens.

As a senior in high school, Rob recalls a cowboy showing interest in his paper mache sculptures. One was of a Native American man wearing a necklace of real coyote teeth. The man wanted to take three of Rob’s pieces to the Art Institute of Chicago, to be considered for a show. “I met him in the parking lot where I would later own a hair salon,” Rob says. “I remember putting the sculptures on the hood of my truck for the man to inspect. He left with those sculptures and I never saw the sculptures or heard from him again.”

Rob sculpted this creature from paper mache when he was in high school.

Older and wiser, Rob and Anna, his wife of 16 years, now live in Black Canyon City, about 25 miles north of Phoenix, with their cute little dogs, Addie and Lacey, and two gorgeous feral cats who appeared in their backyard as kittens and decided to stay (the food Rob and Anna leave for the cats is a good enticement).

Being practical, Rob plans to keep his day job. “I won’t kick that bee hive,” he says. Cutting hair provides a stable foundation from which he can stretch his artistry in new directions and even in new places.

“For me,” Rob says, “the creative process is like throwing dice down on a table. Each throw comes up with a different result, and following one dice often takes me off in a new direction.” Rob’s fingers scurry across the coffee table as he speaks, showing the adventure of going down the rabbit hole of creativity.

Rob’s is a talent and an energy that can’t be contained. No limitations.

YouTube University continues to be Rob’s source for everything he wants to learn and do. When it comes to his sculptures, big and small, he’s adamant that “it has to be horror.”

Three years ago, Rob and Anna trekked to Monsterpalooza in Burbank, California, to check it out and see if he might want to participate in subsequent years. But they couldn’t even get in! After only 40 minutes of being there, they returned to Arizona. Rob doesn’t worry about being in with the art world or even cognizant of artists considered master monster crafters. He’s on his own path, following his own aesthetic, exploring and learning new techniques and new mediums. It’s simply what he does with his endless energy.

At the Phoenix Comicon this year, a long line of young and old people waited to have Rob apply bloody flesh wounds to their faces, hands, knees and elbows. Rob donated The Terminavigator, a large torso piece, to be raffled off to benefit a local no-kill animal shelter. A lucky female scientist from California was delighted to win the sculpture.

Rob recently joined a Facebook group for people who work on horror movies. He’s making connections and expects to travel to Hollywood soon to meet folks face-to-face, laying the groundwork for being considered for future projects.

“I’m transparent about my skills,” Rob says about getting exposure for himself and his work. “I’m opening myself up – heart, mind and soul – to other people, laying bare my abilities and dreams.”

I’m using words like ghoulish, macabre and grotesque to describe Rob’s figures. Yet, they elicit compassion rather than disgust. Their faces reveal them as victims, not the bad guys. They’re pulling together their broken spirits and their broken bodies and riding on, or stumbling on, their dignity intact. They may look like monsters, but Rob has embedded a humanity in each, and given each their own story, their own struggles. They won’t quit, and neither will Rob.

He has the usual self-doubt of any artist and sometimes he’ll ask himself the usual questions; Why am I doing this? Does anyone really care? Do people understand my work?

“I do it because I want to,” Rob says. Let’s hope he’ll always wants to.

Gives the rest of us something to live for.