Robbie Barber is Professor of Art at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and has taught Sculpture there since 2000. Born in Williamston, North Carolina, he was raised on a farm near the Roanoke River in Martin County. He earned his BFA from East Carolina University and MFA from University of Arizona. Barber gained notoriety as a sculptor working in a variety of media and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship and the Southern Arts Federation/NEA Fellowship in Sculpture. He has held exhibitions at Grounds For Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Art, Auburn, Alabama, Redbud Arts Center, Houston, Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, New York, and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum, Japan, and his smile-inducing sculpture for True North in 2016 was titled “Stroll in the Park”—an oversized baby carriage made from an old trailer and welded steel. Barber says, “My architecture-related sculptures are influenced by my travels throughout rural America. I am attracted to the strong visual character of this country’s vernacular architecture. Vintage lap-board houses, mobile homes and agriculture-related structures have become regional icons that ultimately tell the stories of their inhabitants and builders. I often fuse these influences to create hybrid objects of fantasy, the results of which are often humorous, ironic or visually poetic in nature. An example is ‘Goddard Nomad V.’ This sculpture depicts a mobile home that is transformed into a spacecraft of dubious reliability. On one level it reminds us of the dangers of space travel and on another it speaks to the irony that most mobile homes never go anywhere.” “Goddard Nomad V” has been exhibited on the campuses of The University of Texas at El Paso, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina.