Today we’d like to introduce you to David Fobes
Hi David, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My mother was a talented painter and artist. I remember looking through her college sketchbooks and wished I could draw like that. When I was quite young, I was looking through an Encyclopedia and came across Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” and I had a visceral, elated response. I didn’t really have a word for what I was looking at, but I knew that someone, a human, had made that picture, and I wanted to do that too.
When I was in elementary school, I was bullied and never picked for sports teams. My superpower was drawing. I was always the “class artist”. I just seemed to know that’s what I was going to do with my life. I was fortunate to have the support of my mother as well as many talented mentors and teachers that encouraged my pursuit of art along the way.
I started my college career in 1971 at a local community college to study architecture during the height of the Vietnam war . Through a series of mishaps and good fortune I ended up attending the Environmental Design program at San Diego State University. The program was led by American visionary architect Eugene Ray. That experience led to ten years of design /building and construction projects and then back to SDSU to earn an MFA (1994) in Furniture Design with world renowned designer Wendy Maruyama.
I began a long teaching career at SDSU in the School of Art and Design until I retired in 2020. Many projects, works, installations and exhibitions since 1981, I am still working in my studio every day and exhibiting work.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I doubt if any career artist would say that there journey has been a smooth road. Sustaining a creative life is a struggle if one is being true to their authentic self and making meaningful and exploratory work. For many years I balanced a studio practice with carpentry and construction work, as well as occasional commissions.
Even when I started teaching at the University, the pay and the required hours were not quite enough to pay the bills, so I took on furniture and design commission work along side teaching.
Time is our most precious resource. Balancing creative time for art production and time to earn a wage to support that work is a tough act.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I have been making work for over 40 years, the trajectory of the work has morphed and shifted between Furniture Design, Installation, Painting, Photography and Collage. In this day and age of branding, the shift to different modes of exploration and expression has not been the best path towards a “successful” commercial career.
That being said my first twenty years of making, I was known as a furniture maker and designer. One of my designs “X-Case” from about 1981, was a disruptor and was included in one of the first major “Art Furniture” exhibitions, at the then Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, California. That one piece led to many commissions of works and new explorations based on the same design aesthetic.
In 2004 I began an extensive remodel and addition of my home and studio on a canyon in San Diego. I used my acquired building skills to both manage the project and do about 80% of the work myself. That was a good time to re-assess my art career. I began exploring two dimensional works using colored tape. What started as some simple investigations, became a full blown practice making large works on sheet metal. A solo exhibition of that work in 2011 at the La Jolla Athenaeum in La Jolla, California was seen by a large audience and I became “the duct tape artist”. Some of the early tape works have deteriorated, but all of the works in the 2011 exhibition are extent, and I am very proud of that body of work.
2016 was another shift. I felt I had mastered the tape work and it seemed it was becoming repetitive. I began working on making “pure” paintings with bulletin enamel paints, as well as incorporating the paint into furniture design. I had always worked with Collage and that practice came to the forefront from about 2018 to 2022.
In 2022 I purchased some vintage paint by number paintings on a whim. I had always liked that PBN was a democratic “every man’s” art. Most of the classic PBN paintings are from the 1950’s and are visual tropes through the lens of the post war American economic surge and relative peace. I began to cut and rearrange the originals to see if I might some how take these tropes from the past and make new meaning of them through my own lens of angst of our contemporary reality.
The current body of paint by number works seem to be garnering attention and have been in several major exhibitions.
This is the work I am all in- for now.
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
There are so many lessons.
I am not sure this is the most important, but certainly one I am constantly aware of.
As an artist, most of us will probably never get paid the full value for what we do. However, that does not mean you would lower the quality of the work to meet the low pay. The money comes, it pays some bills and then it is gone. The work is forever. Your work is your currency and your legacy. No matter the economy of the situation, make your best work. Always.
Pricing:
- 1. If you exhibit at a gallery, work with the dealer on pricing, They know their audience and purchase history.
- 2. Dont try to come up with an hourly rate, or even calculate an hourly rate.
- 3. How much are you willing to be paid to lect go of the work? If it is an important piece to you, dont let it go cheap.
- 4. If you work on commission, you CAN calculate the quanitifiable which is material costs. Do yourself a favor and run those numbers multiple times.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://misterfobes.com/
- Instagram: @misterfobes_art_design
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/david.fobes
Image Credits
All images by David Fobes
