Wind Gap

Who Made this? Bob Emser (American, 1954)

When was this made? 2003

What is this made of? Stainless steel and polycarbonate

“My artistry has been a personal and artistic progression of life, filled with many ‘Aha!’ moments and coincidences.

I got an undergraduate degree in art and a Master of Fine Art in Sculpture, but my approach to building sculptures is more of an architect’s approach. In fact, when I started college I actually thought I wanted to be an architect and I studied that for a while, so it is in my blood. When I create a sculpture, I would always sketch them out in a mechanical way, sort of like an elevation as an architect would do. Then in my head, I would be able to translate it into a three-dimensional object and know what needed to happen. I think of myself as an architectural sculptor. Aesthetically, though, my inspiration comes from airplanes and boats. My knowledge of those fields is a combination of being self-taught and spending many hours looking: watching planes being built at the Boeing plant in Seattle, Washington, visiting Herreshoff Marine Museum in Bristol, Rhode Island, spending many hours in marinas.

Actually, boats and planes have always been part of my childhood. My father was born in 1921 and was an only child. He spent his days in the basement building model airplanes. So that’s where the interest came from. My father by profession was a mechanical engineer and I wasn’t much interested in organized sports or that kind of thing. So, what we used to do together was build model airplanes. We used to make the tissue paper and wood model airplanes, not the plastic models. The ones we made had all these ribs and spars and frames. I still have many of these here in my studio, that I never put paper on because I like how the frame looks.

These wood model airplanes were the spark behind one of my “Aha!” moments. I had resigned from my teaching job and I had started an art center in an old coffee warehouse in Peoria, Illinois along the river front. I was in my early 40s and was doing a lot of self-introspection writing and journaling. One of the things I had written was, “Think of what you did to keep yourself entertained at 10 years old, not organized sports or another extracurricular activity, but something you did on your own and enjoyed. If you can find a way to make a career out of that, you will be really happy and successful.” When I wrote that, I thought how at the age of 10 I used to build model airplanes; but given where I was in life, I wouldn’t be able to become an aeronautical engineer. Then one day I was standing in my studio and it suddenly dawned on me, I was supposed to make sculptures like model airplanes. So that was a big “Aha!” moment for me. And from that point on, I immediately started cutting up some scraps from an artist’s canvas and made a small piece of artwork to put on the wall.

The materials I used for my sculptures evolved over time. At first, I created frame structures covered in soft patio fabric used for awnings. But I realized that the fabric could easily be cut accidentally either by nature or humans. (I actually had a sculpture in Goldman-Kuenz Sculpture Park at Cedarhurst in Mount Vernon, Illinois, and someone backed into the sculpture and tore it a part.) So as an alternative, I started thinking of more permanent working materials and “Wind Gap” was the first piece I used polycarbonate on. I was looking for something very resistant, which polycarbonate is. It is actually bullet resistant. The only negative aspect of the material is that it can scratch easily and that is why I sanded the back of it, which gives the sculpture that cloudier look.

The copper shaped pieces are aluminum and the choice to work with this material grew out of dealing with commission groups for artwork whose principal concern was: “Will the sculpture be maintenance free?” I therefore looked for materials that could not corrode like stainless steel and aluminum. The aluminum is covered with a coating of Imron®, which is a three-part epoxy that is used to paint semi-trailer trucks and aircrafts. So, it is a pretty durable material.

This piece like many others is inspired by aircraft and sailboats. An aircraft’s wing is the same as a sail, except one is horizontal and the other is vertical. So, the horizontal metal sculptures in “Wind Gap”, when stood up, became sails. The title itself is also inspired by sailing. To me “wind gap” is that moment in between when the wind dies and starts up again. It’s not an official nautical term, it’s something I created. An expression you can also use as an analogy of life, sometimes in life there are lull moments and that is life’s wind gap.

The weekend after I came back from installing the sculpture at the Appleton Museum in 2015, I had a motorcycle accident and I was laid up for eight months. After that, I had a whole different attitude to life. At first, I felt a little lost as to what I should be doing, if I wasn’t making sculptures. Then I had an “Aha!” moment: what I needed to do, was do something for myself. I had started reading a lot of sailing magazines while convalescing and I had learnt a lot of sailing terminology and things like that. So, I decided to build myself a boat, a real boat.

Right now, I am building my second boat and I am having some of the most fun I have ever had. I am using so much of what I know as a sculptor to build it and in doing so I have started a YouTube channel called The Art of Boat Building. “If you are going to make, make it beautiful” has become the tag line to my videos. No matter what I have done, I have always been interested in making beautiful objects and making the world prettier. Whatever I have done I have always tried to make it good looking. When you look at a sail boat sailing through the harbor, it is pure poetry. It may not seem like fine art, but it is.

Fun Fact: Bob Emser was accepted to showcase one of his sculptures in Sculpture by the Sea, the largest outdoor sculpture event in the world which is held on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. In order to keep the costs of his travel to a minimum he built a sculpture that would collapse and fit into a standard suitcase. Emser went to the Dollar Store and bought the cheapest suitcase. He gutted it, measured it and then made a sculpture with an aluminum frame and a soft fabric cloth to cover it. Once onsite in Australia he reassembled the sculpture piece by piece. Following that he was invited back to exhibit at the show another five times.