creativity
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Though Rob does not consider himself an artist (or even craftsperson), he recognises that creativity is important to his sense of well-being.
Well, the ideas, they came from work.I've always
taken sketchbooks on holiday, partly because it slows down the observation,
so it gives you time to ponder. But in terms of making stuff for sale
to others, it was paper recycling through work that got me interested
in paper making and then exploring paper making with an old friend.
We spent a couple of months making paper from odd materials, bracken
and other plant material. That led to trying to make something with
the paper. So making lamp shades with interesting textured papers and
that led to paper mache which led to very large pots, and finishing
those pots was the tricky part.
I'm not a good reproducer of images but I like textures and colours so I looked for ways of decorating the pots where chance played a part in what happened.......made pots for 2 years and sold about half of them ..Then casting around for something else to do I was actually cutting firewood................I went back to paper mache, made shallow wall hanging boxes (key boxes really) and then the pieces of wood simply cut and fitted as doors. I made about 9 or 10 and I must have sold all of them in the end, and they were really nice, it was just a one-off thing because I'd found this wonderful wood.
It was easier then because I was earning very good money, either at the University or for ENCAMS (Tidy Britain group) outside the University