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A Life as a Work of Art
Written By: Emily Crowell | Issue: 2018/10 - October
I thought I was going to write an article promoting a book. This, it turns out, is an article promoting art as a way of life.
“What?” you may be asking.
That’s what I said to myself when I learned that local artist Susan Robert wrote “The Man Who Loved Georgia Tech,” about her husband’s grandfather, Lawrence Wood “Chip” Robert, Jr. Chip Jr. was a dynamic, fascinating man who shaped the progress of the South and whose story would be lost to recorded history had Susan not taken a studious interest in it.
In her introduction to the book, which she describes as “…a recollection from reading [his] papers,” Susan writes, “…every life tells a story. Some lives tell more than one story. But every now and then, a person appears whose narrative is so compelling and filled with such action and adventure that, although their time on the Earth has ended, the story of their life continues to resonate long after they have gone.”
She calls Chip’s life a work of art—and this is where I begin to understand why she, as an artist, took such an interest in him.
I got together with Susan to talk about the book and we ended up talking about the artistic process. Susan is an artist—a “strident” painter of landscapes whose studio in the woods is stacked with art books and sketchbooks and canvases in various stages of completion. She, like Chip, is a creative thinker and a risk-taker.
Susan emphatically believes that art is about the process, not the product. “Lately, I am thinking more about the oft-repeated saying that ‘Art imitates Life,’” Susan says. “This is particularly true concerning the importance of ‘process’ both in art and in life. For the true Artist, everything is process…all the thinking, all the experimenting and risk-taking, all the effort. The entire creative endeavor is about the process rather than the product. This is also true in our lives. The real ‘product’ of the life we make is only ever reached by the ‘process’ of the journey and the chances we are willing to take.”
Chip’s life was a “constant seamless work” in this vein, and she hopes that anyone who reads about him will realize they can make their own lives the same, no matter what their interest. All his papers are in the process of being digitized at Rose Library at Emory University and will be freely available to the public and potential biographers.
Susan’s visual art is on display at the Carolina Gallery in Highlands, as well as Brickworks Gallery in Atlanta and Ann Connelly Fine Art in Baton Rouge.
