One of the world’s elite sculptors is also one of Bucks County’s most overlooked. In Steve Tobin’s world, however, the ordinary is transformed into the extraordinary, and the extraordinary is often taken for granted.
 

By Scott Edwards

Steve Tobin is working on an exposed portion of a concrete platform that extends from the side of his home studio, an addition to a worn, old barn that sits tucked near the front of a sprawling property that’s hidden somewhat by nature from the secluded road upon which it sits in Upper Bucks County.

It’s an overcast, cool morning in early August. Later, the sun will burn off the clouds and spike the temperature well into the eighties, but for now, it feels more like late September.

Tobin is talking to one of his longtime employees as Linkin Park screams over a small radio off to the side. The driveway winds from behind the barn and slopes down toward the road. It’s actually not so much a driveway as a natural dirt-and-rock path that’s marked by a series of deep ruts. There’s no real place to park, so I pull off to the side and begin the awkward 25-yard walk toward Tobin.

Once I reach him, the conversation with the employee ends and the employee leaves, the radio is switched off. (It was on at the discretion of another worker. Linkin Park, Tobin says later, isn’t his taste, but he doesn’t censor his employees.) Tobin then disappears into the barn for a moment and it’s only then, as I start to gain my bearings, that I realize we’re not alone. Amid the disheveled mix of general clutter and art-in-the-works that crowds the rest of the platform, I notice two giant wild turkeys lurking. Then I hear a squawk over my shoulder. I turn and discover a few more nesting in the overgrown brush on the other side of the driveway. It’s a startling sight. For one, I’ve never been this close to a wild turkey, especially one the size of a young, obese child. Second, they don’t seem the slightest bit startled by the people moving around them, the loud noises or even the flare of a blowtorch.

Tobin reemerges, grabs a fistful of feed and squats down before the two on the platform. One is suspicious and chooses not to take any, but it also doesn’t give any ground. The other dives right in, pecking over and over again at Tobin’s cupped hands, sending the small cylinders of feed flying. The turkeys, Tobin says, arrived a little while back and somehow sensed that it was a safe environment. They’ve been there since and apparently have grown bolder by the day.

Tobin stands, asks if I’d like to give it a try and dumps the rest of the feed into my hands. Then he disappears again. The suspicious turkey is still suspicious and the other one now appears full. It takes a step back. This is going to look bad, I think to myself, if I can’t get the turkeys to eat. Tobin’s testing me. That’s why he keeps disappearing and leaving me alone with them. So I take step or two closer to the not-suspicious one and extend my cups hands a little farther and try to encourage it like it’s a dog. What the hell do you say to a wild turkey? It works. Actually, it starts pecking at the ring on my right index finger, which I realize looks like a silver piece of feed. It really starts going at it. Tobin returns, takes notice. I stand to meet him at eye level.

He points to the one turkey’s feathers, which seem to change color and shimmer with the light, and says he’s been trying to create glazes – unsuccessfully thus far – in the same vein.

Aside from the Linkin Park, this is the ideal environment for Tobin, an artist of many shapes and varieties who defies any kind of conventional explanation. Though, if his essence was to be boiled down for the sake of simplicity, it would be this: he is a naturalist, who lives and works to make icons out of nature through art. Whether he’s casting actual segments of forest floor in bronze or breathing new life into discarded, old, rusted objects by incorporating them into massive sculpture-paintings, Tobin’s primary responsibility, as he deemed it long ago, is to respect the earth and to encourage others to do it by projecting it in new lights.

The overgrown vegetation, the rickety barn, the rutted driveway, the wildflower gardens that engulf the sheds piled high with assorted, once-foresaken pieces, the wild turkeys waddling amid trays of half-finished ceramic pieces — this is Tobin’s world — and all of its remarkable juxtapositions: chaos and order, geometric and organic — in high definition. But it’s, of course, only part of the larger picture. Everything Tobin does, as he likes to say, is done for several reasons. So nothing is ever that uncomplicated with Tobin.

He built the studio extension of the barn when he moved to the Pleasant Valley property 22 years ago. The farmhouse, Tobin says, dates back to 1800 and was, when he discovered it, very much in need of attention, which he liked because it made it affordable to him and because he naturally gravitates toward all things old and weathered. But it was the barn that captured the bulk of his attention. Tobin returned from Japan several months earlier after living there for a year with the grand ambition of blowing large-scale glass. The barn, after much searching, offered such an opportunity.

He built the building with 22-foot ceilings so that he could blow glass six to eight feet high, which was unprecedented. He ended up going 15 feet high.

Tobin eventually evolved to casting bronze and glass together. Again, unprecedented. The exploration culminated with a series he describes as “the doors,” though they more closely resemble enormous tombstones in their basic shape. They are thick, thousand-pound slabs that explode in vibrant, intricate colors and patterns under light.

With the completion of the first one, he stood behind the door, flashing a light on it and said to the employee he was talking to when I first arrived, an artist in his own right who left his native Japan to work with Tobin, “Daisuke, I’m done. I’m done with glass.”

After four years, Tobin felt he reached the end. He spent two years finishing the series, as he describes it, then exhibited the doors in a monumental show with Marc Chagall art in a cave in Finland. The display received press around the world and forged Tobin’s legendary status in the glass world.

When the exhibit ended, Tobin moved the doors back to his barn, where they remained out of sight until earlier this year, 16 years after the exhibit. Tobin hasn’t blown a piece of glass since.

The world he shaped

Tobin’s career reads like a series of severe stops and starts. Glass was hardly the only phase with a definitive end point. Tobin, in fact, didn’t even consider himself an artist until he stopped blowing glass, largely because glass is considered a craft and, thus, decorative, in his eyes, and not art. But he also stopped because he had no peers. No one was doing what he was doing. No one. Not even the glassmakers, like Corning. So there was no analyzing or brainstorming outside of Tobin’s own camp, not that Tobin is all that interested in what others have to say about his art.

He moved to metal after glass and then to bronze castings. Ten years ago, he was lured back to ceramics, a genre he dabbled in back in the seventies, by the highly respected potter, Peter Voulkos, a mentor of sorts. At each stop, Tobin revolutionized the medium.

“I’ve had other ideas where maybe I covered 90 percent of the idea in the first six months or two years, or in six months, and after two years I’ve gotten 95 percent of the resolution of the idea,” Tobin says, speaking of his current endeavor. “Some artists might spend the rest of their lives to cover the last five percent. I have moved on. So a lot of my work is maybe 95 percent complete or resolved in terms of the theories or even within the work.”

The art, strange as it may sound, is of secondary concern to Tobin. It’s the manifestation of an idea, but its value is considered roughly in terms of the room it clears in his conscious — or, rather, subconscious. Once done, in other words, he can move on. Tobin thinks this way, in part, because though he takes his role as artist to extreme lengths, he isn’t comfortable necessarily considering himself as an artist. He studied theoretical science in college with plans to go to grad school for mathematics. He worked in a physics lab at the University of Pennsylvania.

Art is as much about the science of the process as the creativity and the expression for Tobin.

“My training is not in art. And art, for me, is a decoration,” he says. “I’m trying to make art real, make it like Stonehenge. It’s real, but it’s also art. And the pyramids. But a lot of what I do is outside of art.”

His curiosity naturally asks why and then begins articulating the answer. His ego ensures that the process that’s involved in getting between the two points is entirely unique.

Art, in at least one significant way, is like blind dating. When a friend tells another friend that she found her friend’s perfect mate, the friend naturally asks, “What celebrity does he look most alike?” Most are really no different in referencing artwork. But Tobin, for one, is determined to make sure that he falls under no one’s shadow. He’s earned the right, in part, by creating truly unique art and, in larger part, by designing the processes under which it is shaped. It’s why when Tobin discusses the phases of his artistic exploration, he talks in terms of years. He is meticulous in his preparation, which is entirely necessary considering a single sculpture can require thousands of hours over the span of several months by a team of four to five assistants. (Tobin employs a staff of 20 men spread across four studios, including the barn at home and a mammoth former warehouse in Quakertown.)

The way Tobin works on several fronts is to start relatively small and grow from there, as the process becomes refined. His bronze “roots,” for which he is perhaps best known, culminated with “The Trinity Root,” an enormous and amazingly intricate casting of the stump and roots of a 70-year-old sycamore that famously buffered St. Paul’s Chapel, which sat across from the World Trade Center, from significant damage on 9/11. Like the doors, “The Trinity Root” was the last bronze casting Tobin did. But it was preceded by a long line of smaller roots, as well as an assortment of other castings.

Heading down a supposed dead end is no longer the concern it once was for Tobin, if it ever was to begin with.

“After a certain point, I realized that I’m going to succeed at everything I attempt to do because I have to,” Tobin says. “I live and I die by it. Just because it hasn’t been done doesn’t mean I can’t do it. And, in fact, it means nobody else did it, so all the more reason for me to do it.”

Dictating the processes through which he creates his art, however, is only a small piece of Tobin’s commitment to his artistic pursuits. Distinguishing his personal life from his professional one is a near impossible task.

“Steve is indivisible from being an artist,” says Dennis Alter, the chairman and CEO of Advanta Corporation and a friend and collector of Tobin’s art of over 30 years. “He doesn’t have a second life. His first life is as an artist and everything, I believe, is a periphery of that, other than his family.”

George Ball, the president and CEO of the Warminster-based seedmaker, W. Atlee Burpee & Co., described frequent, extensive conversations with Tobin, where Tobin sought insight about the inner workings of a seed and Ball, an art lover and Tobin enthusiast, angled for a closer look at Tobin’s creative mind. Like everything else in his world, even friends serve a distinct purpose in regard to his art.

“It’s almost like the world is his element or his raw material. It’s really weird,” Ball says. “I see him as being a very large artist in the sense of being – I know the cliché of a renaissance man is overused, but he really has that quality of being sort of like, of being an artist who’s in kind of a new paradigm of being.”

Tobin demands a remarkable discipline of himself, which is ironic because he credits never having his impulses from childhood on squashed in any significant way as one of the leading reasons for having such a firm grip on what precisely is important to him today. He speaks four languages, each are byproducts of Tobin completely immersing himself in foreign cultures where he was living and working at various points in his life. He maintains a strict diet, grows most of his own food and doesn’t drink. He exercises daily, which includes playing tennis daily, which he describes as “almost a religious experience.” (Tobin co-owns The Tennis Zone across the street from his Quakertown studio and gallery with Fernando Perez, a former pro and 10 years Tobin’s junior, who Tobin says he’s been losing to weekly for the last decade.)

“I’m very physically attuned because my sculptures are an extension of my body,” Tobin says. “And if my work is the medicine or the philosophy in the work is about the power and sophistication of nature and then I go and deface my body, my body is nature. If there was a conflict between the philosophy in making the work and the philosophy in the work, I’d be negating myself and I’d be internally conflicted and hypocritical.”

Conspicuously inconspicuous

Alter’s art collection encompasses names like Rothko, de Kooning, Pollock, DiebenKorn, Rauschenberg and Johns. Aside from a piece by Joel Shapiro, Tobin’s is the only sculpture he owns. Asked how Tobin fits in, Alter responds, “He’s a genius, too.”

“I have enough of a property here where there’s enough space to put some of his larger works,” Alter says. “They attract me for their intrinsic beauty and mystery.

“Steve is so creatively eclectic in terms of the types of work that he does and the range of work that he does that I’ve found a welcome home for his work regardless of what my major part of my painting collection revolves around,” he says.

Ball has hosted a public exhibition of Tobin’s sculpture at the historic Fordhook Farm in Doylestown, where Ball lives and Burpee maintains trial gardens, for the last two years comprised of both his own large- and small-scale sculpture as well as an assortment of others on loan from Tobin. Ball, who’s been collecting Tobin’s art for nearly 20 years, owns his first bronze root.

“His forms really have a – what’s the word? – movement to them that I’ve seen only in like Matisse, to a certain extent in Picasso, but mainly in Matisse,” Ball says.

The obvious question becomes: If he’s achieved such an elevated status, why then is he a relative unknown in his own backyard, a backyard he’s lived and worked in for over two decades? “It’s a tough question to answer because I think there’s perfectly wonderful art out there. Don’t get me wrong,” Ball says. “But I don’t think that anybody’s doing stuff like Steve’s doing. I mean, frankly, I don’t think anybody even in the country is doing stuff like Steve’s doing.”

The simple explanation, Ball says, is that Tobin’s not on the radar because Tobin has no desire to be detected. Tobin has never and will never do a commission. He sidesteps public exhibitions because he can’t stand the paperwork that’s involved. And he readily admits that most of his artwork goes unseen. Regardless of the size and scope, from the rows of ceramic cups and containers that overflow his home studio to the gigantic roots that tower over his Quakertown studio and gallery, the art is there because Tobin wants it there. If outside interest should develop, he’s not adverse to it, but it will never be a motivating factor.

Of course, his operation does not run itself. For this sake, and seemingly this sake alone, Tobin recognizes the business side of his art and conducts it with the same deft tact through which he creates his art.

“It’s all funded by the sale of art,” he says. “So I have to interface with the mainstream establishment to build up my prices through a very meticulous and calculated career approach, deciding what to show, what not to show, where to show it, building up an auction record, provenance of the series before I start showing it. So that’s my professional side, which I don’t just let happen. I conduct that.”

Steel and fatherhood

A couple of years ago, Tobin experienced a really good month, financially. A really good month. Like, $2 million good. Which could, of course, have bought him and his family a lifetime of security. He paid off a small mountain of debt and he handed out big bonuses to all of his employees. And then he took over a steelyard.

It was the beginning of what Tobin considers to be his final frontier. Once again he’s venturing where he was told he shouldn’t – you can’t bend massive steel! His goal sounds relatively simple: create 50-foot tall steel sculptures that vaguely resemble a root system. On one hand, it’s not that much of a departure from his bronze-cast roots. On the other, it’s a huge departure, and the divide between the idea and the realization could be as wide two decades, according to Tobin.

“I’ve always been the master of my ideas,” he says, “but with the steel roots, I feel like a three-year-old toddler standing in front of an idea that could potentially be immortal and sit with Calder, and Moore and Rodin if I devote myself to it and I don’t screw it up. There’s many wrong ways to go with this series.”

He started at 20 feet and plans to work his way up from there in 10-foot intervals, with each piece requiring six months of intense work by a segment off his staff. The lessons learned will be applied to a new, larger model, and so on. In this case, quite simply, bigger is better. Once Tobin achieves his desired height — possibly 100 feet — the second leg of the series will involve taking the roots in a minimalist direction, with only three legs, which, he believes, could take another decade.

Shortly before starting in on the steel, Tobin embarked on a greater challenge that will command even more of his attention for the remainder of his days: fatherhood. He has a five-year-old son and one-year-old twins (a son and a daughter). Together, they’ve already accomplished what no one else has ever been able to in keeping Tobin close to home. As of late, Tobin spends 90 percent of his time at his home studio, he says, delegating more at the other three, and he travels far less. In his first 10 years in Pleasant Valley, Tobin typically spent four to six months a year abroad, which included working in his own studio in Italy.

“I think what I’m trying to impart in my children is intimacies, is the sheer time I’m with them. There’s no substitute,” Tobin says. “There’s a cliché that I will live from, and I don’t know who said it, but, ‘Life is about showing up’ and putting the time in. And, by putting the time in with them, hopefully that will instill in them being good parents when they’re parents to put the time in with their children.”

Simply spending time with his children, at their level, also has reawakened some of the most basic elements of life to Tobin, which, of course, impacts his art. “It allows me, in knowing them so closely, to see through their eyes and experience things that I have become immune to,” he says.

Just beyond the sheds stacked with the loose ends and the barn sits a cove of tall trees where Tobin has erected a playground. In the nearest tree sits a tree house. It’s nothing elaborate, just a basic wood platform where the trunk breaks off several feet from the ground into a few thick arms.

When Tobin traces his life’s journey back to an origin, as he’s often asked to do, he recalls a similar basic tree house that his father built for him. “It was a place to have the wind blow over me, the rain rain on me and the leaves fall on me with no barriers,” he says.

When I ask if he’d want his life for his children, Tobin snaps back, “Absolutely not.” So the tree house isn’t about that. Instead, it’s literally — simply — a platform offering a slightly different perspective from the world they’ll come to know. In that regard, it’s really no different from Tobin’s art. Or any more ambitious. Even at 100 feet tall, Tobin’s basically just enticing you to look up when you should have been looking down all along.