Art Class
Sculptor Robin Bark celebrates the Mustang’s 50th birthday with a limited-edition piece
By Steve Turner
Photos courtesy of Ford Motor Company
Like most Mustang fans, we love having various trinkets to display around the house and office to show of our Ford pride. Well if you want to display something that will really get the conversation started, Robin Bark, an artist from the United Kingdom, has sculpted some limited-edition metal that fuses his love of art with his enthusiasm for cars.
“I think I was drawing cars the moment I was born,†Robin said. “Growing up in South Africa, I wanted to design cars, but there wasn’t much call for it, so I switched from industrial design to graphics, which took me into advertising for a time.â€
After moving home to the U.K. to pursue a career as an art teacher, Robin began experimenting with his art mediums. This led him to play with casting metal. He went on to create a series of motorcycle and sports car cast in aluminum. The Mustang sculpture is his first American car work.
“Mustang is a very different shape from the earlier cars I had done, which were more classically streamlined,†he said. “I look for what the designers were trying to achieve with shapes, and try to capture the essence of the car while also imparting a sense of motion to a static object.â€
Robin uses sketches to move the shape from paper and into clay. From the clay he creates a resin model that becomes the form for the prototype casting. Of course making art from an iconic design is a big responsibility, but he definitely pulled it off. Robin captured the essence of the Mustang design.
“From the shark-bite nose to the long, sweeping line of the fastback roof to the tri-bar taillamps, Mustang has a quintessential profile that makes it easily recognizable to everyone on the road,†Moray Callum, Ford vice president, global design, said. “Robin Bark has captured the essential nature of one of the greatest Mustangs in his sculpture, creating an object of art that appears to be fluid motion.â€
The final sculpture is cast in batches of 10 at a foundry in Guildford, United Kingdom, the 1965 Mustang sculpture is available in limited-edition run of 500, so if you like it you better pick up one soon.