Heartney, Eleanor; Bob Trotman — Bob Trotman: Inverted Utopias

North Carolina, North Carolina Museum of Art, 2010. Softbound. Brown wraps, 96 pp, profuse color illustrations. From the publisher--A native of North Carolina, Bob Trotman began his artistic career over 30 years ago as a self-taught furniture maker and then gradually moved away from crafting functional objects to creating sculpture with a human presence. Trotman’s sculptures depict anonymous people who appear to be in various states of change or flux, both physically and emotionally. The figures are simultaneously humorous and disquieting. Dressed in suits and ties or ladylike dresses, they are portrayed upside down with their legs waving in the air, poised on the brink of jumping or leaping, or sinking into the floor as if it were made of quicksand. Unlike Norman Rockwell, who once said, “I paint life as I would like it to be,” Trotman focuses on the darker side of real life—a life filled with uncertainty, ambiguity, precarious footholds, and shifting sands, and he does it with a deeply gratifying sense of irony and humor. Published to coincide with the exhibition Bob Trotman: Inverted Utopias at the North Carolina Museum of Art, this catalogue features full-page color photographs of Trotman’s work as well as essays by the artist, a prominent art critic, and the curator of contemporary art at the NCMA. New, still in shrink wrap.