Steve Tobin
River, glass, 60 feet long.

The interview was conducted by Dana Sunshine of TheArtBiz.com.

When did you begin working as an artist?

In college [Tulane University] my degree was in theoretical mathematics, but before that I did physics.

So you have a physics background?

I have an art history degree from Columbia University. Since I studied in New York City, I had many interesting internships at museums and galleries. I worked at the Manhattan Laboratory Museum / Children's Museum as an assistant to the Director of Art Education. My first job in the commercial artworld was as registrar at M.Knoedler & Co. Inc. It was extraordinary to actually touch the artwork that I had studied. I became the Director of The Tibor de Nagy Gallery; a contemporary art gallery on 57th street in New York. The Gallery was well known for developing the careers of such artists like Helen Frankenthaler, Fairfield Porter, Larry Rivers, and Elaine de Kooning. In 1990 I curated the 40th Anniversary Exhibition of the Tibor de Nagy Gallery at the Brooklyn Museum. Once I began working directly with the artwork and with the artists I fell in love with the business. Going to artists' studios opened a window into their process. I was invited into their vision, witnessing an intimacy and vulnerability in the artists' work that inspired me to want to help promote their careers.

So if you started when you were 14...

Well, I was throwing pots and stuff in high school. And in college I got my pots into museums. I had skills and whatnot . I thought art was easy, but it was because I had talent and worked harder than anyone else. Even in high school I would take the wheel home on weekends, and while everyone else was going to parties I would throw pots. I did the same in New Orleans. Nobody worked, I couldn't believe it, all these materials were paid for, and I fired probably as much stuff as the entire art department.

Why is your output so large, particularly when you are working within the same theme, or idea? What makes you make another piece and another piece are you trying to achieve some ideal?

That's different for each series I'm working on. For something like the Matzah House, we made one and that's it; that just captures it. No variation is needed, and it's not a piece that I'm gonna make again. But some of the exploded ceramic pieces, to me they're presented to me by the event, the creation. I take the block of clay and I take the explosives and I blow it up. The form that it takes is given to me, I don't have control over it. I have control of the scenario but not the piece. So to me it's a surprise every time. Like when you look at a flower. When you look at a flower, that doesn't preclude you from wanting to look at the next one and the next one and the next one.

So are you never interested in making the same thing twice? Because of course one of the great things about bronze casting is that you can make multiples.

I've never made the same thing twice. We've taken bronze casting where it's never gone before. I'm allowing the material to fulfill itself. bronze had never been worked with this level of detail before. When we cast the earth into bronze, we get every pine needle twig and insect to reproduce exactly into bronze. But I may move on from bronze. I'm not loyal to any particular medium. I'm very excited with clay. We want to build 40,000-pound blocks and explode them. We're doing ceramic pieces that you can walk inside of. Instead of you holding the piece in your hand, the piece is holding you. To me scale is very important in your relationship to the object. I make things that are one inch and very tiny and also things that are very large.

Why did you choose glass and metal?

What pretty much unites all the materials that I work with is transformation by fire. That fire, the transformation, the magic it's almost a wall of separation, you can't really touch it with your hands. When clay is transformed during the firing process, it's magic. It's the same with pouring bronze; there's some sort of magic through transformation. Transformation through fire. Because before it's not art, and after it is.

You cast directly from natural elements in your work. What does that mean for you?

Well, I want to encourage people who are developing their language to develop their language, their reasons for making things, and how they make them, and not follow me or anybody else. So to answer this question is really in conflict with that. But the reason I cast directly comes from having spent the best times of my childhood in a treehouse. It was my place; it was my waking dream. And so the things I handled out there, the leaves that would fall and land in my hand, the insects that would cross my path, were the gods. So rather than me molding something with my own hands, that is about my rendition of it. My direct casting process is like taking a 3-dimensional photograph of something. A photograph just describes the surface. But when I take a dead bird and turn it into bronze it's more than capturing the surface of it. It's like making a structural photograph. Something is LOST; something is preserved just like in a photograph. But that is a small portion of what I do.

If you could choose three artists to talk with, who would they be?

Well, my inspiration doesn't come from art. My work has more to do with philosophy OR science or poetry. I would love to talk to Einstein when he was twenty-something, just as the ideas were gelling. He was restructuring time and space I'd like to see the process of that. I'd love to see Mozart in his teens or early twenties, when these themes are coming to him in his head and heÌs deciding how to organize them. To see that inspiration gel. Not after the fact, but during it. But one artist that I admire and would enjoy to spend time with is Andy Goldsworthy. I love to see him take a common element that we all have seen and played with or passed over, and transform it magically. What I think makes his work so important is everybody has done that before. Everybody has piled up rocks and leaves, that's what makes it speak to everybody. Everybody has done it.

You have 10 people working here. Do you maintain this studio on work that you sell?

Yes, it's completely funded by the sale of artwork. And it is a real struggle financially. That dictates what I can afford to make. I'll only make one large root piece because that's all I can afford to make. If I sell it then maybe I can afford to make two more.

Do you ever make commissioned work?

No. Because I want to make what I want to make. Typically, the work that I make now won't sell for five years. I made the termite hills two or three years ago and I'm not expecting them to sell for another couple years. I made a 60-foot wall of bones and I had it for five years. It was written up in a magazine so it finally got the provenance to justify the price on it. I don't think about prettiness or attractiveness in terms of sale because I just never think of the sale. You have to justify the ambition of the work, the scale or the price or the subject matter. People like some sort of foundation in terms of work being shown to them. Like the glass doors that I made, showing them with Robert Motherwell at the Delaware Art Museum next year will justify the price.

How did you get to the point where your studio is self-sustaining?

It's really day to day. It has been for 11 years since we've been here. I have a great credit line at the bank so we've gone way into debt. When I built this studio I built the shape of the building for these 15-foot high pieces of glass. As soon as I made them and showed them they were on the cover of a magazine and immediately I had a lot of shows and that paid for the operation. When I moved on from glass I had done enough that those pieces support the studio. What we made five, even ten years ago, is what supports the studio today.

How did you start out?

I started out in ceramics making pots. Not commercial pots particularly but I would sell them. Then I did glass blowing and glass has always been easy to sell. I had a one-man show in Soho when I finished college. I had just graduated and sort of talked my way into a one-man show, so I had enough big stuff to sort of limp along with glass blowing. I did flea markets, I mean whatever I could. I slept in my car; I slept in a baseball dugout for the Baltimore craft show. I really squeaked by. But I hadn't developed my own language. So it almost didnÌt matter what I made. I survived on that, but it didn't make me happy making it.

Was there some sort of turning point where you got a show and knew you had to start delving deeper?

Well, I was throwing pots and stuff in high school. And in college I got my pots into museums. I had skills and whatnot . I thought art was easy, but it was because I had talent and worked harder than anyone else. Even in high school I would take the wheel home on weekends, and while everyone else was going to parties I would throw pots. I did the same in New Orleans. Nobody worked, I couldn't believe it, all these materials were paid for, and I fired probably as much stuff as the entire art department.

So if you started when you were 14...

Well, it's interesting. I've had some really great shows. Every time I have a show or something coming out I think, this is going to be it, this is what I need to change my career. And I've had fantastic shows. I had a two-man show with Marc Chagall that was funded by the American and Finnish Embassies for 200 sculptures, and it was in Time Magazine. And I thought that was gonna change my life. But nothing like that, in my opinion, is gonna change your life. Building a career is different than having a show or making a great piece of art. If I'm talking to artists just starting out, I tell them to just make the best piece that they can. Just make one great piece, and that will elevate you. Rather than try to build a career or try to come up with something that people are gonna want to buy. Because if they don't buy it then you're stuck with something that doesn't mean anything to you. At the very worst if you invest a year to make one great piece and no one buys it you have a piece that is the best that you can possibly be. So you can't lose. You're measured by not how many pieces you make and sell but by your greatest work. If anybody's out there measuring, you are the measure.

Then what do you do?

You hire the best photographer you can. All my photographs for the past 16 years have been taken by George Erml. He's in New York and he's a little more than you would normally pay a professional photographer, but he is the best. Then you have an image that people can see. And more people will see the image than the object. Then you have a show in a gallery or you take an ad or make posters or postcards or something you can make postcards for $100 and you mail them out to whomever you want to see it. And then they're seeing the best image of the best piece you can possibly make. A great piece elevates you.

That's an interesting perspective, because a lot of people feel it's the amount of shows you have on your resume that's important.

My resume is one page. Every time I have a new thing added I take something off. I've had many shows. But IÌm just not interested in the resume. The work speaks for itself I think.

What would you warn people about?

I would warn people from listening to me. Or anybody. Your parents, especially not your art teacher. Anybody. I recommend the less formal training the better, because when you learn somebodyÌs way of making something, everything you make using that process falls under the shadow of this person and who he or she learned from. My clay glazes don't look like others. It's just not done by a process relevant to anyone else. I think that it would be a mistake to follow in anyone else's footsteps. If you're really trying to be a unique artist you need to try to break out.

What about mistakes that you made in the beginning?

I think every mistake that I've made professionally has been important in the formation of my artistic soul. If I make a piece and it's terrible, then maybe I had to make it to get beyond it. But to make a mistake and justify it that could really be the mistake. I've thrown away more pieces that most artists will make in a lifetime. I've made more bad work than all my assistants will ever make put together. Because I'm not afraid to make a complete fool of myself. My job is to show all of myself, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

This article was originally created for TheArtBiz.com. It appears on NYFA Interactive courtesy of the Abigail Rebecca Cohen Library.