Artist: Travis Lober
Exhibition: Ink 16: The West: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
Media: Acrylic Plastic, Etching Needle, Sand Blasting Machine, Ink
Gallery: CSULB School of Art, Marilyn Werby Gallery
Website: No Website
Instagram: No Instagram
For this week’s artist conversation, we got to meet with artist Travis Lober. Lober is currently an undergraduate at California State University of Long Beach in the Print Making program for the CSULB School of Art. He was born in San Jose and grew up in Gilroy, California. Before doing art, Travis used to be a construction modeler. He uses his previous job to inspire his art work because at his old job, spiders represented the good, the bad, and the ugly at the construction site. One thing that I found crazy is that Travis spends at least 25 hours per week at the school working on his art pieces. Some other interests of his include model making playing soccer.
Travis Lober’s art is very technical and very particular about how precise it is. He explains how it is more important how it looks rather than what it means. When asked what the formal qualities of his art are, he said that was a “hard question” and that all the ink is on paper. The main materials Lober uses for his art are acrylic plastic, an etching needle, a sand blasting machine, and ink. His art work is monochromatic and it allows the viewers to see the image over the color. With no color, the image is able to drive more emotion. He also makes his pieces look photo-like because he says it is greater than it looking graphic.
Lober uses his art to portray what he views as the good, the bad, and the ugly in the world. That explains why he named his exhibit “Ink 16: The West: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly.” One example would be his art piece of the spiders that resembled what he saw when he worked as a construction worker. While he had that job, he explained how all the daddy long legs, the tarantulas, and the black widows represented the good, the bad, and the ugly of his old job. He also created art work of Bernie Sanders, Hilary Clinton, and Donald Trump to get his view point on which presidential candidate he liked. He put the word “Good” under Bernie, “Ugly” under Hilary, and “Ugly” under Trump. I thought that art piece was really funny.
Overall, I really liked Travis Lober’s art work and the theme to his exhibit. I especially liked how he used his past experiences including his old job to come up with his ideas for his art work. Although I may not be an artist and not have the same purpose for using my past, I believe that everyone should use their past as a tool to help them in the present and build their future. We have all been through good, bad, and ugly moments but it is what we do with those moments that define us. In this case, Travis Lober used those experiences to create great pieces of art.
jaysonfields 