Rob Trumbour
MFA ’18 Fine Arts Low-Residency
Many years ago, someone close to me died, creating an impulse to find a physical way to deal with the loss. I milled a large block of wood and then cored a hole through it. Over some days, I burned the block away. The space of the hole I had initially made grew as the physical form diminished. A sense of absence took over. The piece never felt finished and sat for a decade until one day I cut the remains of the burned block in two. I build a form around the pieces and cast them in concrete. The remaining wood was burned out of the casts and absence became form again.
This is as good a description as any of how I work. I’ve always struggled finding the language to describe what it is I am trying to say with the things I make. I am interested in loss, in absence, in fragility. To what we attach ourselves to and to what we are trying to let go of. I hope that if I explore such things with commitment and humility, perhaps a viewer might glimpse with me that ineffable space of wonder and mystery.
Rob Trumbour’s practice engages in the strands of lived experience that cut across time and bind us as humans coping in the world. Loss, absence, and vulnerability ground his work, and shape for him, a curiosity for what it means to be.
