Robert N. Reincke

Based upon the essay "Technology versus Ecology: Human Superiority and the Ongoing Conflict with Nature" written by Stephen J. Gould, I created a modified keyboard. The paper uses an example of the keyboard as a design that has lost its efficiency, but is still in use today (the keyboard layout used today was invented for typewriters in the 19th century). My sculpture takes the inefficiency of the keyboard to extremes. It also allows for an organic element to imply (like much of my recent work) that nature is superior to our current faulty, materialistic world.

I created multiple ceramic pieces based on extraordinary and/or useless electronic kitchen gadgets and impractical shoes. The kitchen gadgets included an electric carving knife, electric mixer, plastic serving tray, broken blender, and a bowl. The items, including the shoes, were wrapped in plastic bags to create interesting texture and a strange morphed appearance. Molds were then created. Multiples were derived from the molds.

My book, "Falling Off the Catwalk" (which deals with issues of religiosity and debt amongst others) was nailed onto a wooden cross. Three nails were hammered into each of the triangular support bases of the cross. The book was nailed in such a way that the image on the back cover created a mannequin (more so than a representation of the Christ figure, since the cross is not seen). The entire support structure was then blanketed in strips of upwards of five years of credit card bills. The entire figure was then blanketed in an opaque skin of fabric. The resulting sculpture was ghostly yet optimistic and triumphant. It symbolized regeneration and rebirth. It was dismantled shortly after its critique in my intermediate sculpture class in the fall of 2011.

I incurred low interest credit card debt to support myself whilst completing my two books (and a third that may never be completed) during the heyday of financial credit in the mid 2000’s. I considered this a “student loan” in the sense that I was financing a new career as an author. The credit cards (AMEX, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Amazon/Chase) have since been mostly paid off (or refinanced) allowing me to use the upwards of five years of credit card billing statements as art.

I titled the piece "Falling Off the Catwalk III" because the first "Falling Off the Catwalk" responds to my actual experience as a model. “Falling Off the Catwalk II” is indicative of my book (entitled “Falling Off the Catwalk”). This third piece is the concluding statement to the episode of the experience (I), the book (II), and the resultant sculpture (III) composed of all three.

Sculpture created by collecting trash from the major departments at Pacific Northwest College of Art (painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, administration) and combining them into a representation of the school at this exact moment of time. The piece digs into the "Universal Subconscious" of the school. I participated in a shamanic journey to visit the school prior to creating this piece.

Money is a material, conceptual, and spiritual tool that humanity has used through the ages to facilitate change, build and destroy culture, and experience life and spiritual lessons. Five (three are not shown in the image) large, weighty metal coins are mig-welded with sculpted forms of the presidents on one side and symbols obtained on shamanic journeys to the President's on the converse. The coins draw into question how we value and physically use money, the implicit artistry in our coins, and their inherent use as commemoration. Three-quarter view representations of the Presidents—Washington, Lincoln, Jackson, Grant and Franklin—correspond to their U.S. paper currency images. The converse sides depict my interpretation of what the presidents would have placed there themselves. Converse images also add a spiritual dimension to the ensemble—the presidents were channeled to obtain the information.

This sculpture is made of two porcelain heads with a steel base. It is one of a series of pieces I'm creating that represent the integration of all the aspects of my persona as accumulated from past life experiences. These works deal with both the Nature of Reality and the Nature of the Self.

I use various research methods to determine past life incarnations. In some (forthcoming) sculptures, I merely use my intuition whilst molding. These incarnations represent aspects of my personality.

In this piece I represent myself as the eternal now on one side by presenting a porcelain mask of myself and another iteration of myself from a past life on the other. The two are joined in a composition similar to a Janus Head. This symbol has been utilized by many cultures throughout time. One interpretation of this configuration is that the one side looks out to the future while the other looks back in time. I believe that life is eternal and in a circle. The eternal Now (represented by my own mask - similar to a Death Mask) and the past life incarnations. I'm not asking for anyone's agreement with this interpretation. At it's simplest, the sculpture represents a persona of myself and my current image.

Six foot papier-mâché dummy made from two years worth of recycled in-progress business plans and general correspondence. Names and identifying information were obliterated in the process, ensuring confidentiality of all potential parties (individuals, businesses, corporations) except myself. Only portions of general business catchphrases and comments were used in the paper visible on the surface. Examples include emails (with the senders name deleted) of public lectures given about the demise of the film industry in 2009 and generalized information about the decimated commercial real estate markets.

This piece speaks of life, death and universal oneness. The inside of the masks, painted with cobalt blue, were created from a porcelain likeness of myself. This porcelain likeness is similar to the death masks made for centuries (to their greatest extent in the 20th century) of famous personages. All three masks were created from the image of my face—my “death mask”—and are therefore united in their creation by a common element: me.

The external features of the mask were created from past-life retrogressions I performed. They represent different cultures in differing periods of time. They are meant to represent a universal oneness between cultures.

The metal armature represents the flowing nature of time. Metaphysically all time is happening at the present moment—there is no linear time. The metal armature combines and holds the various representations of differing cultures through time. Its circular nature evokes the image of a whirlwind of time that is ever-present.

In a broader sense I speak of the decline of the American empire (the death) and what I see as the solution to our current cultural, economic, geographic, political, and ecological woes—a focus on the oneness that we, in all cultures share. All cultures, societies and times have common threads even beyond the most common of all—we are all humans living on this earth. Cultures throughout history have shared inventions, discoveries, and even styles despite being geographically, politically and socio-culturally worlds apart.

I seek to investigate and explore these common attributes in my ever-present hope to strive for world peace, both in my heart, and in its expression in the broader society as a whole.

The Minotaur Thinker, combines inspiration from Rodin’s prominent sculptural piece, The Thinker, with newly emerging revelations of ancient wisdom, rediscovery of ancient spiritual art and practices, and my own spiritual contemplations. Contemporary thinking, research and writing has re-established the truthful spiritual nature of what has, since Greek times, been called the “Minotaur.” Ancient cave paintings place this half-man/half bison as a goer-between-worlds or Shaman (many ancient caves contain Shaman or Minotaur paintings and drawings). Analysis reveals that ancient Greeks, in an effort to destroy the culture of defeated Crete, defamed this once-Spiritual figure by denigrating it to something wicked (Dancing at the Edge of Death: The Origins of the Labyrinth in the Paleolithic, Lorimer, 2009). Pagan Roman and then Christian culture continued this wrongful interpretation by placing the Minotaur as a devil in the pit of a labyrinth. The once-spiritual labyrinth design, which is also undergoing a revival (even the Grotto in Portland is building one), became associated with “hell.”

Auguste Rodin created a plaster version of the sculpture entitled “The Thinker” in 1880 for the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. His inspiration was The Inferno (Hell) of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The Thinker was meant to represent the poet, Dante, contemplating the gates of hell. It, along with other sculptures, were meant to adorn the door and entranceway of the museum. This door was never made and The Thinker, finally cast in bronze in 1902, was first placed in front of Panthéon in 1906 and then in front of the Rodin Museum. Numerous bronze copies have since been recreated and placed in many cities around the world. One sits in front of the Detroit Institute of Arts, which I saw many times in my youth.

The Minotaur Thinker reinterprets Rodin’s sculpture and repairs the historic significance of the Minotaur. Whereas Rodin was inspired by Dante and Dante’s version of hell, I am inspired by a thoroughly contemporary re-exploration of Shamanic practices (Shamanic studies have re-emerged from an eons long slumber with such notable institutions as the San Francisco based Foundation for Shamanic Studies). Instead of a bull, I use an American bison. Instead of “hell,” I reveal the Labyrinth as a meditative journey where ancient shamans traveled between the worlds of the living and the deceased and unborn. Whereas Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollack (Pasiphaë) re-imagined the Minotaur in painting as a purely sexual beast, I look at the spiritual. By replacing Rodin’s Dante with the Minotaur, I re-empower the ancient Shaman in contemporary sculpture.

This is the first of three nearly-life-size images I drew with Vine and Conte charcoal. Animal figures were glued onto the paper similar to Kiki Smith's work (from whom I took inspiration). All three images are on the same sheet of paper.

This is the second image.

This is the third.

Painted plaster coins are connected together by a golden thread representing the connection of monetary ideas and currencies throughout time. Plaster—a common, cheap material—begs the question: who dictates what “money” is worth and how much of it is available? Plaster coins and “Tabula Rasa” are strung together in a circle to represent the Native American concept of wampum—a gift presented at the signing of a treaty or agreement. Once corrupted by European conquerors, I place the history of currency back into a Spiritual construct.

This coin is composed of images created from photocopies of $1, $5, $10, and $100 bills. It is a true Bison Head coin. Like the current Thomas Jefferson coin, the image of the bison is a full head shot with the body at a side angle. Here the bison is given full respect (in a sense, I've truly given his power back).

This painting was inspired by coins of the early American colonies that depicted trees (aspen, birch, pine and scrub oak) and the Fleur-de-lis of the French Republic. Early colonial attempts to mint currency were thwarted by England, who wanted control and dependence (at the time). The illegality of colonial currency and the resultant economic dependency and recession/depressions helped cause the American Revolution. If it weren’t for loans and shipments of gold by the French Republic to support U.S. forces (that equaled half of what it cost Britain to fight the war), the U.S. could have lost. The Fleur-de-lis was meaningful to several ancient cultures including Egypt, where it represented the heart and tongue of the Sun God Ra.

"Native Americans used wampum—beads made out of clamshells—as a commemorative symbol to solidify the singing of an agreement or the securing of a contract. Europeans ordained that wampum could be used as currency. Native Americans began to accept the European strands for trade of beaver skins and the like. Eventually the British overproduced (counterfeited) these once spiritual symbols, thereby obtaining goods for less and eventually destroying Native American economies. (The British also counterfeited the American “Continentals”—the first U.S. bill—to hurt the Colonial American economy during the Revolution). This painting was begun in Los Angeles and completed in Portland.

Painted after a shamanic journey and road trip to Sedona Arizona.