WIRED FOR ART

Bobby Sharp makes art. It's what he does. He is a prisoner of his gift. When we see or taste, it is a sensory experience. For Bobby the sensory perception manifests as form and color, as a complete visual structure. He has an ability to imagine complex shape arrangements that would make M. C. Escher take note. Bobby is dyslexic and autistic. For those who know him there is little doubt that he is a genius, an autistic savant, if one is inclined to split hairs in qualifying genius.

As a young boy Bobby was thrust into the maze of special education. He was an impossible child to place. Everyone knew it and Bobby made sure they knew it. He found one teacher named Matt Straub who helped him navigate safely through the system. Around 17 years of age Bobby was put in a Vocational Education program to prepare him for the assembly line. He was given hand tools with the expectation that he would learn basic carpentry; instead he used the tools to become a master woodworker.

In a short time, Bobby was designing and making furniture, not hobby stuff, rather, cutting edge world class design art furniture. In his late 20's he found himself in a whirlwind trying to meet the demands of the high energy marketplace. He was now gaining the attention of major players in the art world. He has worked with high profile art dealers such as Ivan C. Karp and Robert Horn. Robert is a poet and retired art critic and dealer. As an early advocate and mentor to Bobby, Robert recalls fondly a time when Bobby was walking down the street picking up stones, twigs, and other organic material. He immersed the material in plastic and let it harden. Robert knew then that Bobby had a gift and that art was forthcoming and Bobby was onto something.

For the last 7 years Bobby has been immersed in making a commemorative body of work around "Woodstock 69." Jimi Hendrix has become the central icon of this endeavor. Bobby's love of Hendrix goes back to his early years. His mother owned a popular local college bar named "Toni's Royal Grill" during the 1960s. As a toddler he vividly remembers waking up in the morning to 40 or 50 hippies crashed out on the floor in a sea of hippie hair. Jimi Hendrix music was frequently a backdrop to these early memories. Bobby has been asked to write what Hendrix meant to him. It should be noted that he taught himself to read and write while in his 20's. Rather than trying to paraphrase, it is better served to use his words.

"The historical moment of Hendrix was given its own free expression by the musician more than any other artist. Since it had to become free and direct expression, Hendrix was the most representative individual artist alive at that moment. In the tones made volumes by his super charge instrument there is an existential value equal to other musical compositions at moments in the 20th century chaos and revolution. It must be said, however that Hendrix improvised his art; he did not interpret it from musical script like Schoenberg and his school 60 years earlier, which we call expressionism. Hendrix lived violence (violence of the 60's Vietnam etc.) and died of it. (He had wine in his lungs perhaps by force.*) The sarcastic quip of Pete Townsend might serve: "he was bigger than LSD."

Bobby speaks of Hendrix as a moment in time. Bobby's art also exemplifies that concept. His acrylic castings are time capsules that isolate a moment. They exude explosive movement of color and sound suspending time in static beauty. They both represent and express. His work is a defined and composed statement.

Bobby is currently spearheading an ambitious collaborative project for the Woodstock Museum at Bethel Woods to create a grand scale installation based on 36 previously unknown photographs of Jimi Hendrix. He is working in concert with artist James Bray, the acting liaison to the Jimi Hendrix Foundation. As a separate project a forthcoming Hendrix edition will be available through Dan Jaffee of Art for a Cause - http://artforacause.org/ for the benefit of the James Marshall Hendrix Foundation. Bobby's direct contact website is http://bsharpstudio.net/

(*Editor's note.)

- James Bray, Collaborator, Vice President, Art for a Cause