Vision, unclouded
Sculptor and teacher Robert Ortbal isn't declaring career triumph, but he sees the deep voyage of his art
By Bob Sylva

If artist Robert Ortbal were to sculpt a piece of his own exploratory, inventive, highly turbulent life of late, he might take a scoop of Styrofoam pellets and toss them into the teeth of a howling fan.

See Ortbal scatter. See Ortbal spore. See Ortbal fuse, multiply, a volatile molecule on a toothpick.

Ortbal has been busy. In 2005, after years of hunger and itinerant teaching, he was hired as an assistant professor of art at California State University, Sacramento. The year before, he was awarded a prestigious Eureka Art Fellowship in San Francisco. This year, he received a $60,000 public art commission, his first, at Oakland International Airport. This week, his work will be exhibited at Art Basel Miami Beach. And closer to home, he has what amounts to a local debut show ongoing in Sacramento.

On a more personal level, his father, a decent, practical man who could never quite fathom his son's devotion for art, died in 2006. In 2005, Ortbal and Mary Stump, a writer and Oakland educational consultant, were married. The two had been together for years. Then, quite unexpectedly, they had a baby, a miracle, a shining star, a son named Hank, who turns 3 on Christmas Eve.

In art, in truth, in life and fulfillment, Robert Ortbal seems within grasp of great things.

But let's not jinx him with pronouncements.

"I'm just trying to pedal as fast as I can to keep up," he says, smiling. "It's a little scary. You don't know when it can change. I'm a little cautious about saying anything about ..." He pauses, hesistant to put the words "career" and "success" in the same sentence.

"I think it's best to learn how to exist in the uncertainty of things," he says, a man comfortable with ambiguity, happenstance, artful impoverishment. "Given my experiences in life, I want to welcome all the uncertainties that life springs on you."

His show, "Robert Ortbal, Untold Wrinkles," is on view through Dec. 22 at JayJay Gallery, 5520 Elvas Ave. The work, delicate and beguiling, is exquisitely crafted, using peculiar media such as foam, chicken wire, aluminum foil, bamboo skewers, plastic balls, wax and aqua resin. It probes, if it doesn't celebrate, the microscopic, the cellular, the intestinal; the salted layers of marine life, which seem to yearn and undulate in thin air.

In describing his work, Ortbal, who is fascinated by the link between natural phenomena and human nature, the spark of chemistry and consciousness, says, "You take the banal, you uncloud the vision, and you see it for the first time. The sense of wonder and awe. The sense of mystery is very important to my work. That, and the overriding theme of regeneration."

"I'm a real fan of his work," says Phil Linhares, chief curator at the Oakland Museum of California. "His exploration of form, his use of materials, which are clean, zany, humorous. Of all the sculptors in the Bay Area, I think his work is the most exciting and innovative."

"We all have imaginations," says Diana Daniels, assistant curator at Sacramento's Crocker Art Museum. "We all ponder crazy questions. But it's interesting when someone (like Ortbal) can act upon that in art. It allows us to take the voyage, too. When you think of natural growth, biomedical research, cloning, etc., (his) work is really of this time period."

"I've been following his work since Davis," says longtime UC Davis art professor Mike Henderson, who was something of a mentor to his former student.

"What strikes me about (Ortbal) is that he has one of the best vocabularies of any artist I have ever heard. I mean his verbal vocabulary. I think that's the basis of his creativity. The way he works, the words he uses, he is able to define the world."

Henderson, 64, a noted painter and a blues artist, agrees that Ortbal's gorgeous work is recondite.

"You need to know something about life," he says. "You need to read a book or two to understand his work. He is provocative. And that's what a good artist should be. Provoke you to think and to be more human."

It's a late morning, Ortbal is pedaling again, this time languidly, across campus, from his office at Kadema Hall to the sculpture lab, on a dodgy black Schwinn he has owned since high school. The bike, with its fat tires, its battered fenders, its basket made from a plastic milk crate, its silly-sounding bell, looks like a found-object sculpture hastily assembled.

Ortbal, leaving at 5:30 a.m., commutes to campus several times a week from his home in Emeryville (in a staid Volvo station wagon; not atop a bicycle), is teaching three classes this term – clay sculpture, collage and assemblage, and a senior seminar. He and sculptor colleague Andrew Connelly, in a department regeneration, were hired, replacing retiring stalwarts Gerald Walburg and Stephen Kaltenbach.

Since he deplores campus food, Ortbal pops a Trader Joe's casserole into his office microwave oven. Next, looking for a quiet hideout, he wanders out back of the sculpture studios, into a fabulous boneyard of scrap metal, junk, slag, projects failed or abandoned. In a far corner, there's a scarred picnic table bathed in thin winter sunlight. In between bites of Thai tuna with vegetables, he tells his story.

Robert Ortbal is 45 years old. He has gentle blue eyes, short salt-and-pepper hair, the slim, lean physique of a runner. He is indeed thoughtful, if not philosophic, eloquent, but not at all pretentious. He is wearing wrinkled cargo pants and a frayed sweatshirt. The most striking thing about Ortbal may be be the fact, the accident, that he's an artist at all.

He was raised in Campbell, near San Jose. His father was an aircraft mechanic for United Airlines; his mother a homemaker. The family atmosphere was working-class Catholic. He never drew as a boy, never once visited an art museum.

As he says, assessing his early career prospects, "Art was not an option."

In high school, he surfed. He played soccer. With a counselor's blessing and against his parents' misgivings, he took a ceramics class. He liked it. But there was no thunderbolt. Overall, he was an average student.

"I remember being very interested in collecting things," he says of his boyhood. "I would go out and come home and my pockets would be full of stuff."

He went on to West Valley College in nearby Saratoga. His plan was to study cartography. Instead, he fell under the spell of an inspiring ceramics teacher. Was captivated by the work of Peter Voulkos. Transferred to San Francisco State. Bravely declared an art major.

When Ortbal decided to go to graduate school at the University of California, Davis, and earn a master's in fine arts, his tolerant father exploded.

"He thought it was a ridiculous idea," says Ortbal, recalling the rows. "He thought I should go into the military and do art on the weekends."

Instead, paying his own way, Ortbal went to UC Davis. He found his niche, he found his calling. And his medium.

"I'm an objects guy," he says. "There is no doubt about that. But I also think my work is very painterly. Color is very key in my work."

So is an unspoken spiritualism.

"The sense of growth and decay, the life cycle," he says. "The metaphor of life, the human condition. What it means to be human. That's part of the core of my work. But I get away from saying the 'S' word. I don't like to label my work. You say the 'S' word and people turn away."

Another day at Sac State, Ortbal is teaching beginning clay. The majority of the students are women, most of whom are not art majors. The students are molding, shaping the receptive clay.

Ortbal, a pastel shadow, moves attentively about the studio. His voice is soft, his words encouraging.

Later, back in the boneyard, his head limned by receding sunlight, he mentions the joy of teaching, saying, "My passion for art, for making art, is a guiding force in my life. When I see students who get excited about that, well, I like to pass it on. Early on, I never knew that this (art, the studio, etc.) was a possibility. It's like giving back."

On a recent Saturday morning, the light from a panel of pebbled windows sublime, Ortbal is busy in his studio in Emeryville, packing up pieces for his upcoming show in Florida.

For the past five years, he has owned a studio in the 45th Street Artist Cooperative, a once- industrial area of Emeryville now under gentrification. Up until the birth of his son, he and his wife actually lived in this curtailed space. Now they have a townhouse.

After graduate school at UC Davis, Ortbal commenced 10 years wandering in the Bay Area art desert – waiting tables, doing small shows, exhibitions, installations. He had part-time teaching gigs at Skyline College, College of Marin, Dominican College.

Mostly living hand to mouth, Ortbal survived.

In 2002, he had a major breakthrough. After spending some time in Europe, he came back and created "February's Song," a fantastical chandelier composed of steel, plaster, tool dip, glass spheres and a dozen animated song birds. The piece earned him the Eureka Fellowship and was shown at the Berkeley Art Museum. It was a harbinger of work to come.

He shows you photos of his recent installation at Oakland International Airport. The work, called "I am you, he is she ..." consists of several mylar panels displayed outside the restrooms in the Southwest Airlines terminal. Perhaps not the most auspicious of locales. But one guaranteed to attract, if not reflect, plenty of public exposure.

"It's sad that he didn't get to see this," says Ortbal of his father. "He would have been happier with me doing this than if my work had been shown at New York MOMA. He would have been there every day for the installation. He loved airports. He loved travel."

Ortbal's studio is divided into two spaces – a living area with carpet, kitchen, a tiny gas stove. There are metal cabinets, photographs of baby Hank, statues of the madonna and a wooden cross. The working area is full of tools, a table saw, a welding torch. There is this clunky office chair on casters. Sitting here, atop a ripped seat of foam, sipping a cup of tea, Ortbal begins the process of creativity.

One fraught with doubt, uncertainty.

He says, "Here is where I come to explore my psyche. That's what I'm interested in in my work. To get after that dialectic of chemistry and consciousness. There is seriousness and purpose. The mood isn't always dramatic. It can be quite bleak in here at times.

He shudders, laughing. "But it can also be one of the greatest joys of my life. That's what's satisfying to me. When you uncover something. That's a very satisfying feeling. It keeps me coming back."