ABOUT

Bob Dauber is a stone sculptor living in Scottsdale, Arizona. His first experience carving stone was in 1973, his freshman year at Pomona College. “I enrolled in a sculpture class and the instructor showed us how to use hand tools—hammers, chisels, rasps and files—to create shapes from alabaster and other soft stones. I fell in love with the process—the intense focus that carving requires, and the sense of losing oneself in the stone. I ended up spending far more time in the studio than the course required.” Although he may have had fantasies of building his own studio and becoming a sculptor, Bob's life took a different turn. He did not pick up a hammer and chisel again for 48 years. Instead, he became a lawyer and, eventually, a law professor. After a long career on the law faculty at Arizona State University, he retired in 2021. "Once I had the flexibility to pursue a nonacademic passion, I bought some hand tools and a few chunks of soft stone and watched some Youtube videos to refresh myself on the basics. That incredible feeling I had as a college freshman—becoming one with the stone—returned immediately.” Learning of his new passion, a friend suggested Bob should look into MARBLE/marble, a stone carving symposium held each summer in the town of Marble, Colorado. “My first session at MARBLE/marble, in the summer of 2021, was transformative. The accomplished artists at the symposium showed me how to use pneumatic and electric tools to carve marble and harder stones, and they taught me the joy of finding the sculpture in the stone. I returned to Arizona knowing I wanted to spend as much of the rest of my life carving stone as I possibly could.” Sculpting marble is a meditative process for Bob. “I lose all sense of time when I am in the studio trying to shape a stone. I feel that I get to know every cubic millimeter of the rock intimately. It tells me what it is willing, and not willing, to let me do. The resulting sculpture might be an interesting by-product, but I am doing it for the process.” Most of Bob's sculptures evoke improbable, organic shapes and figures, from the whimsical to the abstract.