By Elizabeth Brannon
Marty Robbins is an artist. He’s also a mechanical engineer. And he’s a guitar player, a photographer, a graphic artist, a woodworker, a fused glass artist, a blown glass aficionado, a business owner, a teacher, a framer, a builder and a jewelry maker, just to name a few things that describe this treasure of our community.
Marty is a seeker of knowledge, a walking encyclopedia and master of many skills. He likes to invent things and experiment with things, specifically new techniques for the art world to use. He’s a real NASA fan. He is tenacious and ever-curious and has an attitude that he can learn from anything.
He’s also the current president of the Cross Timbers Artist Guild, which gives him the opportunity to support artists and their work and teach them how to display and sell their art. Marty supports artists being paid for their work, and recommends local artists for commissions.
Marty has been married to successful local artist Anita Robbins for 43 years. He is also a dad, grandfather and a great-grandfather. Marty’s children and grandchildren have artistic talents like Marty and Anita. Their offspring are accomplished and budding artists in the visual arts, dramatic arts, fine arts and musical arts.
Marty has an associate’s degree in photography and while he wanted photography to be his career, it wasn’t possible to support himself and his young family through being a freelance or portrait and wedding photographer. A skills and interest survey pointed him towards mechanical engineering, so he earned a bachelor’s degree in that subject from Brigham Young University. Mechanical engineering tapped into the scientific side of Marty and proved to be the more flexible and lucrative choice for him.
Marty worked very successfully in corporate America and has lived and worked in Canada (he served as president of a Canadian company) as well as in Utah and Texas. His success at work allowed him to support Anita in her career as an artist.
Several years ago, when Marty was offered a golden parachute from the corporate world, he bought ARThouse, and serves as the main marketing and advertising force behind ARThouse in Flower Mound.
Running ARThouse allowed Marty to return to his creative roots and he resumed his work with photography, jewelry making and fused glass. Creativity and engineering are at their highest when working with glass, kilns, heat and melting metal, and it’s in these arts, that are a combination of creativity and engineering, that Marty has found his niche and joy. ARThouse allows him to work as an artist and scientist while teaching others to develop their creativity.
One of Marty’s missions for ARThouse is to develop creative minds and to make art available to people through the joy of creating. The classes and displays from artists and creative competitions help Marty realize the many goals he has for ARThouse.
Marty knows art (music, drama, fine art, singing and dancing) activates a portion of the brain that’s critical to growth and helps students have better lives with art as part of their world. Art classes for special needs people helps them blossom and can be therapeutic for them. For those who are in challenging times and situations in their lives, art can be freeing and healing. Marty cheerfully shares that while about 10% of the general population is left-handed, more than 50% of their art students are left-handed!
For Marty, art is a perfect blend of logic and feeling. Students who study with Marty are encouraged by his gentle temperament and soothing, non-judgmental ways. Marty treats people with the respect they deserve, as long as they are decent people. This encourages artists to try and to succeed and to start out simple and confidently move to more complex works.
Although Marty is gifted in photography, metal and woodworking, he is now focusing on glass. In the future, Marty wants to sculpt using fused glass. He’s working on building a kiln that can accommodate sculpture that is 3’ X 5’. Marty works in glass every day and tries new techniques that he shares with his glass students. Kiln work takes a full day, and luckily for the glass students, Marty has the patience and the knowledge to make the students of fused glass learn, experiment and be successful immediately. He reminds students that a work is one thing when it goes into the kiln and another thing when it comes out! A little like the fires of life….
Ultimately, Marty would like to go on a mission trip for his church and wants to further the Lord’s work on earth. His spirituality and his personality would make him effective in mission work. Marty can and will do good things anywhere he is planted, including here in southern Denton County and at ARThouse.
A traditional Renaissance man was athletic, an inventor, courageous, a man of character, well educated, charming, courteous, an artist, and a person who had wide interests and expertise in many areas. We salute Marty Robbins, Renaissance man and pillar of the arts community, and thank him for his commitment to the arts, education and to personal decency.
Elizabeth Brannon serves on the Flower Mound Cultural Arts Commission.
