Artistories on KXCI – January 5, 2020
Spencer Edgerton — Sculptor and Maker
Spencer Edgerton inside We Robot. Photo: Eva Romero
In this episode of Artistories, we hear from Spencer Edgerton, a sculpture, maker and father of brainchild; Ei/We Robot. Spencer talks about this massive art making machine starting with its smaller predecessor, the Egg Bot, invented by Bruce Shapiro. Egg Bot spoke to Edgerton, as he was already cutting patterns into spherical things, like his Chimineas Planetarias. He walks us through the birth and rough adolescence of Ei Robot, i.e. getting a Burning Man grant to build it, but having it fail once it was installed at Burning Man. But don’t despair; not all was lost as Edgerton explains; he learned how to bring people on to a large-scale project and the whole experience left a life-changing mark on the team, as many of them were moved to then embark on their own creative projects. The future of We Robot is bright, as the call for art designs is open; the beast will be fired up at a public art-making exhibition this spring. We chat a bit about public art and Spencer’s earlier artistic moments, like in art school at UArizona and in the Luminarias del Pueblo project, which inspired many emerging artists who went on to produce some of the city’s most iconic public art. At the end, Spencer graces us with tales from his life and art trajectory as it followed a unique geography via Bisbee and Germany.
