Bob Marsh

Bob Marsh is an artist and Professor of Product Design at Kendall College of Art and Design at Ferris State University. He has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, and participated in numerous artist residencies over the last 8 years. His work often draws from historic craft practices juxtaposed against contemporary common culture. The exhibition letters & melodies features kinetic sculptures, works on paper, and mixed-media installations.

I am most engaged by exhibitions and institutions that showcase a breadth of works in material, scale, content, format, and refinement. It is this broad array that allows for unanticipated connections, oppositional qualities, and lengthy tangents. This enjoyment of the scatter-shot is tempered against a desire for cohesion, but more in mindset than materiality. It is with these sentiments that I have pulled and produced works for “letters & melodies”.

My inspirations come from both common culture and the fine arts, and by default, the signifiers associated with them. This duality of inspiration is mirrored in my studio production, which allows for a constant feedback loop of both calculated choices and serendipitous discoveries. I desire the finished works to have the critical lens of formal inquiry, contextual theory, and visual ambiguity; offset and tempered with points of levity and easy invitation.

The most recent works pay homage to blue-chip artists and intentionally reference many inherently blue-collar pursuits, such as home remodeling, automobile modification, and local sports leagues. This work pulls from and adds to our ever-growing collective history, from which inspiration is drawn, and an often dyslexic reading occurs.