Robert Wick brings his art to Roanoke Rapids
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Roger Bell
The Daily Herald Staff Writer
Artist Bob Wick, co-owner of Wick Communications, brought his personal art to Roanoke Rapids Thursday.
Wick, whose began sculpting in college and has pieces displayed in the Phoenix Botanical Garden, along with venues in Lakeland, Fla. and Akron, Ohio, can now add the garden beside The Daily Herald to the list of sites displaying his art. Wick’s latest sculpture, “Seated Torso,” made of silicon bronze, is the latest edition to the Roanoke Avenue streetscape, and Wick said he’s pleased to have it there and hopes people will come to see it for what he made it to be.
“Those lines that are in it are a metaphor for strata,” Wick, who, along with his brother Walter, owns Wick Communications, the company which owns The Daily Herald, said. “Not just Earth strata, human strata. We are formed, layer after layer, until we evolve into the people we are.”
Wick said the sculpture represents the unity between person and planet, with plants placed inside the torso in various locations to represent this unity.
“It’s inspired by Earth and the human figure,” Wick said. “I don’t see us as separate from the earth, we’re just an extension of it.”
Wick said “Seated Torso” took about a year to create and was one of the few sculptures he’s crafted which skipped the modeling process. Normally, he said, he will sketch an idea for a sculpture, then build a plaster model before moving onto the final rendering.
“With this one it just worked after the sketch,” Wick said.
Wick’s sculpting began when his aunt, Dodde Wick, urged him to do a portrait sculpture of his uncle Jim, James T. Wick. After putting in some work, Wick was astonished to see the sculpture came out looking just like his uncle. Encouraged by this new-found talent, Wick continued to sculpt classmates and anyone else who wanted to be sculpted, then moved on from portraits to larger sculptures representing more abstract ideas, one of which, “Saint Earth,” took him 9 years to complete.
As time has passed, Wick has found his passion for art has increased, and is eager to get onto the next 7 to 10 years of his art, most of which is already in sculpture form. But even aside from his personal art, he is hoping getting his own art out there makes people realize, in some small way, the importance of art to the strength of any community.
“It’s important a community strives to have a sense of art and sees how we’re all tied together,” Wick said. “The poetic mind or spirit is the common denominator of all our hearts and souls.”