Louise

Date: 1997
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1998/1998.65_1a.jpg?itok=g6y2DIy6 width="256" height="330" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/louise-36382"]] || Title: **Louise**

Artist: **Bob Trotman** Born: Winston-Salem, North Carolina 1947

Medium: bleached, dyed, and pigmented limewood and maple, casters, and rubber Dimensions: 54 x 36 x 36 in. (137.2 x 91.4 x 91.4 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of an anonymous donor and the Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York

Accession: 1998.65 || "Bob Trotman's solitary wooden figures invite the reflection that the junction between accident and intention may be the fulcrum of human experience." – [Dinah Ryan, Sculpture, December 2002]
 * Additional Information: **

"Art must be the axe for the frozen sea within us." - [Franz Kafka (1883-1924)]

Overscaled sculpture. Idea rooted in imagery. Step-stool but not meant to be functional. Emphasizes form and visual properties rather than utility. Image is disturbing and disquieting. She is dressed as a 1950’s clerical worker, in a sweater and with bobbed hair. She is a woman in distress – note hand to forehead, lines, head turned to engage visitor. Image of exploitation – climb the back of another worker to get to the top. Talks of place of women in the workplace, office politics. It is a look at the culture of the 1950’s, not a personal philosophy. Furniture as sculpture. [curatorial walkthroughs]

As a figurative sculptor my concern is the exploration, interpretation, and representation of the human body as a primal medium for projecting thought and feeling: in the expressive language of its poses and dress, its gestures, its facial expressions, and in its disposition in relation to its surroundings. Of the many possibilities open to me, I am most interested in expressions of alienation: alienation of the self from society, from the physical environment, and even of the self from itself. Not only is this feeling resonant for me personally, but, I believe, by way of attempts to avoid it, it is responsible for much of our social behavior. For me the expression of alienation is more penetrating with a certain amount of ironic humor. Since I work primarily in wood, I see my efforts in relation to the vernacular traditions of the carved religious figures, ships' figureheads, and the so-called "show figures" found in the nineteenth century outside shops or in circus displays. I am concerned, however, with contemporary sensibility, even if I approach it through what some might consider an archaic medium. My subjects are confronted with dilemmas they can neither escape nor understand, and wood, through its organic warmth, its quirks, and flaws gives their quandaries an immediacy they might not otherwise have.
 * Artist's Statement: **

Bob Trotman was born in Winston-Salem, NC in 1947. He received a B.A. in philosophy from Washington and Lee University and for 30 years has maintained a studio in the foothills of Western North Carolina. Self-taught in art, he has received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, three from the North Carolina Arts Council, and, most recently, a nomination for a United States Artist Fellowship. His work is in the permanent collections of the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The North Carolina Museum of Art, The Weatherspoon Museum of Art, The Mint Museum of Art, The Museum of Art of the Rhode Island School of Design, and The Museum of Art and Design in New York among others.
 * Biographical Information: **

Artist Biography SAAM Collections Page
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