Bob Clyatt
Bob Clyatt · Source: New York Artists Circle · Rights retained by the original rights holders
- Medium
- Clay, Encaustic, Found Objects, Mosaic, Plaster, Stone
- Based in
- Rye, NY
- Practice
- Sculpture
Bob Clyatt uses longstanding sculptural forms to explore contemporary cultural questions. His current projects include CoPortraits: collaborative sculpted portraits made with another artist from a different culture and h… Full biography
Biography
Bob Clyatt uses longstanding sculptural forms to explore contemporary cultural questions. His current projects include CoPortraits: collaborative sculpted portraits made with another artist from a different culture and history, Shared Spaces: engaging diverse communities around the US in creating a sculptural collage of the American flag with their chosen objects, and Conversations: creating life-like busts of diverse Americans and engaging them together in installations.
Bob was born in Oakland, CA, and lives and works in Rye, NY. His work has been exhibited in solo shows in Santa Fe (Jane Sauer Gallery) and New York (Lower East Side-Dacia Gallery and Bushwick- Anthony Philip Fine Art) as well as group shows in Paris, Hong Kong, Italy, and throughout the U.S. His sculptures are in permanent collections of the Burchfield-Penney Museum in Buffalo, NY, and Museo Arte Contemporanea Sicilia in Italy. The work has been reviewed in numerous art publications including Hyperallergic and featured in the NY Times, Wall St Journal, and other national media.
Bob spent 8 years in a formal study of sculpture, centering on his years at the Art Students League of New York. As a young artist, Bob was able to spend a significant time staying with James Baldwin in France, where "Jimmy" educated him on the urgent need to create art with a human purpose.
Artist statement
My process is foremost to be present and open to people, events, and forces shaping our time in history. My work uses the human form as a vehicle for discovery, invoking our timeless human awareness and thrusting it into contemporary political and cultural context. Working with such a historically loaded subject as the figure has challenges: cultural and historical allusion become a kind of medium in my work. Currently, I am focused on new ways of seeing and engaging with the realistically sculpted bust or head.
Most of my works involve the use of clay, a highly impressionable medium which I engage using a blend of traditional and expressive sculpture methods, sometimes working out of imagination and pure physical embrace, other times through close observation of a live figure model with a focus on gesture, psychology, movement.
Later in the process, I apply a range of methods to finish the work, from traditional ceramic firing methods to mold and cast methods such as lost wax bronze casting or plaster casting. I work iteratively, creating series and exploring an idea or approach over a period of years and many different versions—it takes me a long time to start to understand my own work. Finally, I have a roving eye for new materials and finishes, found objects, and other ways to bring contemporary voice to a piece that might otherwise remain a traditional form.
