Robert Ortiz Studios Blog

In my February 13 posting (An Ortiz Entry Table for the White House) I wrote about wanting to make a piece to commemorate our moment in history.  From where I sat watching the election returns I felt that as a nation we were elevating someone whose heritage, ancestry and story was unlike any other previous president.  In choosing this person we were affirming every person’s hertiage, ancestry and story as never before.

For much of my own early life I felt treated like an immigrant in a land where I was born a citizen.  And so I was moved by the election to want to create something to capture what I consider a watershed moment, hence my idea to make an Ortiz Entry Table out of Koa and Wenge, marrying a Hawaiian wood and an African wood made by a first generation Puerto Rican whose own heritage reaches back to Lebanon, Corsica and Africa and whose style intermarries American and Asian influences.   After four months of failed attempts and blind leads a formal offer  finally was sent, on my behalf, by Senator Benjamin Cardin of Maryland to the White House . Now, it took Sasha and Melia about 5 months to finally get their dog so I’m guessing that I may not hear for a very very long time…if ever.    Having come to that realization, I came to another and it is this;  whether the White House or anyone wants this piece,  I need to make it. 

I am usually uncomfortable with the title “artist”…I think of myself as a craftsman.  What I make fills someone’s need and if nature smiles on my work it will also be useful and beautiful.   Still, my work does not usually “speak” to something beyond what it is…a desk, a dining table, a chair.   But I feel compelled to make this piece because I do feel that this piece might speak beyond what it is, that it calls on me to honor that moment when we said, as a nation, that we will do something differnt, that we will turn the page and try something that we have not tried before.  Regardless of how it turns out I feel that we must honor that moment, not the man, but the moment.  In honoring the moment we honor the best in ourselves.  So for once I most definitely want to wear the hat of the artist as I realize that I must make this piece, not because someone wants it, not because someone commissions it but because I feel ”called” to do it.   I have to make it.  

This of course comes at a time when work and cash flow is tight but having made this public declaration I will begin to set resources $$$ aside to acquire the wood and materials.  My goal is that a call from the White House notwithstanding, the piece will be finished and unvailed by the first anniversary of our brave and daring declaration on election day…stay tuned.