| Rand Robbin | ||
| Birth Date: 1938 |
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Artist Gallery |
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| Rand Robbin was born in 1938; the son of Mr. and Mrs. Walter C. Robbin of Bigfork, Montana. Robbin graduated with a BFA in education from Montana State University, Missosula, Montana. While at Montana State University Robbin was a student artist on "Venture," (MSU student magazine) for four years, a member of the art club, and secretary to special events for the student education association board.
Rand Robbin, a Bigfork artist, historian, and a former college art instructor, fondly remembers taking children drawing classes from Robert Huck in Glacier National Park.
In 2013 Rand Robbin placed 3rd in the Annual Exhibition of Artist Member Works for the piece titled “Martian Wake at Roswell, 1947”. The following is Robbin’s story about this piece: “In July, 1947, a starship reportedly crashed near Roswell, New Mexico. The headlines prompted more sightings and hysteria, causing flying saucers and oblong spaceships to become the explanation for airborne, previously unexplained phenomena. Conspiracy theorists and believers in things paranormal were bolstered by the U.S. Government’s refusal to discuss the matter, and it’s unwillingness to refute the possibility of such an event. As if to admit their own uncertainty, bureaucrats and military officials collected data, interviewed witnesses, took to the sky, and issued reports - many of which fostered more uncertainty, and even today, give fuel to those who subscribe to the myth.
My sculpture, “Martian Wake at Roswell, 1947,” is a personal reaction to that time in our history, and is crafted from black walnut and burl of maple. Physical descriptions of aliens stepping to Earth were as varied as the size, shape, and number of spaceships putting them at our door. And I mean “at our door” in the literal sense. I remember awakening in darkness to the low-level thunder of F89-D Scorpions above my bed, scrambled from Malmstrom Air Force Base in response to the unidentified object seen above the Flathead Valley. With a pod of air-to-air missiles beneath each wing, the jets crisscrossed the Valley and repeated the pattern until their screaming presence retreated eastward and away from their discovery of nothingness.
Black walnut is a hard wood, resistant to human messing-with, yet compatible to my personality, to my preference for story-telling through combat with unwilling material. Nearly always at the end of this war with wood, sculpted walnut becomes a tactile and visual wonderland unique to its grain, color, and reflective nature.
Come the day that critters from space appear at my door, I expect they shall stand like those attending the “Martian Wake at Roswell, 1947”. I see them as diminutive, with no hands or legs for causing harm, in company with a bikini-clad fellow hoping to enjoy Flathead Lake. The subject of the wake, the prone figure with extended legs, fell victim to a hard landing. Poor fellow. Call him the “Milky Way Pharaoh,” the guy who financed the trip and just came along for the ride”.
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