Young artist brings his dreams to life in 3D
Robert Rorich first discovered his love of art as a 10-year-old, when he drew so many pictures, they covered his bedroom walls.
WHITE RIVER – Ever since those early days, he has experimented with a variety of art and materials, from paint to pencil, ink to Jik, and on to sculpture – the form which has truly grabbed his attention and focus in the past few years.
The former Uplands College pupil is already a household name in the Lowveld. While recently on holiday here, Rorich found time to create a Jock in the Bushveld sculpture to be placed in an unknown location at Casterbridge Lifestyle Centre.
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The almost 22-year-old thanks his late French grandmother, Josette Strauss, for educating him about art as well as his high school art teacher, Jennifer Schaum, who allowed her students to try their hand at all art styles.
“You either like a kind of art or you don’t. One day, I drew in pen and never drew in pencil again. I love drawing but it has to be in pen,” Rorich told Lowvelder.
The way I think is also three-dimensional. Real life is 3D, and that’s how I think and dream about situations, and I think my sculptures represent that.”
Rorich has returned to Cape Town, where he has been living for three years. For the first two, he read for a BSc degree in mechanical engineering. He took a break from his studies in 2016, however, to work on his art. He moved out of university residence and into a digs with seven housemates and worked mostly from home.
“I learned to do casting myself, which was a positive reinforcement, that I can make and sell sculptures. Casting is a long, expensive and labour-intensive process. I also spent a lot of time in the Woodstock area where there are many inspiring people to learn from,” Rorich said.
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He returns to the University of Cape Town to join the electro-mechanical engineering programme this year, which he believes is the “degree of the future”.
Will he choose art or electro-mechanical engineering as a career? “Probably neither. Maybe both,” Rorich said.
“What I do know is that I want to do something which helps people and the environment. I just don’t know what that is yet.”
It makes sense, then, that much of his creative inspiration comes from the Lowveld.
“In the Cape, there is the mountain and the seals. But here we have the bush and the inspiration is endless. All of my sculptures are of humans and animals, usually wild animals,” he explained.
I love muscles, anatomy and movement. There is movement in nearly all my work; I think it makes the piece easier on the eye and more iconic.”
In his matric year Rorich worked on the sculpture of two boys which stands in a pride of place, in the centre of the fountain at Uplands College.
“The two boys are experiencing gravity’s pull in opposite directions. If the hanging boy lets go, he will fall upwards into the sky, leaving the hand-standing boy to lose balance and fall down,” he said.
Rorich is excited for what is to come, including the exhibition of a number of his sculptures at Elno Art Gallery in Centurion at the end of the month.
