With the release of the new Evolve Love Ring collection we find ourselves contemplating the idea of personal evolution. What does it look like? Can we trace the moments and events that lead to change in our daily lives? We thought it would be interesting to take a tour through the evolutions that led to the existence of Robert Young Sculpture as you know it today. Life is constantly evolving, growing and changing, sometimes it comes in gradual waves and sometimes it happens all at once in sudden bursts. How many people end up exactly where they predicted they would?
It’s safe to say that Robert Young never envisioned himself as a Sydney jewellery designer or even making a collection so customiasble as the “Evolve Love Rings“. He found himself in a jewellery studio after decades of work in the worlds of photography and sculpture. Still, Robert has always found himself shifting physical matter into new arrangements. He started sculpting birds when he was seven and later, as a teenager, he carved faces in wood. At that point he didn’t even realize he was sculpting, it was just what he did. Robert eventually gravitated towards photography, but even there he often found himself more intrigued by the objects he was photographing rather than the photograph itself. An object asks the viewer to fill in all the blanks, to create a story about who, what, when, where, why, and how. Curiosity about these questions led Robert to a long career in sculpture.
For Robert, the next stage of evolution, from sculpture to jewellery, was a natural one. The transition signified an important move from dark to light in his life. Although he was a foreigner to expensive jewellery and diamond rings, he knew how to translate a story, his stories or a customers story into art. The medium changed, but his philosophy remained focused on meaning and expression. Robert has never been a pure craftsman intent on creating a “beautiful” piece. Beauty is present in all of his work, but it’s always an extension of a greater story or idea. This is especially true of the pieces in the new Evolve collection which are intended to transform and shift along with the wearer.
Here’s Robert in his Sydney, Australia studio. Happy, content at his bench…. and whats his next expression piece ? unknown !