We were struck at Comic-Con by a surreal sculpture at the Gentle Giant booth, right at one of the main entrances.  We discovered that it was by Robert Williams, one of the original underground cartoonists in the Zap collective, a founder of pop surrealism (AKA lowbrow art), founder of JUXTAPOZ magazine, and fine artist.  We were lucky to get the chance to talk to Gentle Giant president Karl Meyer and Williams about their relationship.
 
Tell us about your program with Robert Williams.
Meyer:  Well we’ve been working with Robert for quite a few years now.  Robert was brought in by a friend of mine, a guy named Rick Maverick who does a line of jewelry and he’s also an artist.  He brought Robert by, because Robert was looking to get some sculptures done.  At Gentle Giant we’ve been doing 3D and sculptures for almost 20 years now.
 
By sculptures you mean 3D versions of his art?
Meyer:  Yeah, that’s what we’re doing for him.  The origins for Gentle Giant come more from the toy and licensed product world.  So that’s where we came from.  But as we’ve grown and developed over the years, integrating and utilizing digital sculpting and scanning and this type of process, it allows us to take anybody’s concept and realize it into 3D and then produce it at any size.  So we’ve started in the last few years doing work with a lot of artists, Robert being one of them, also artists like Kenny Scharf, Urs Fischer, and helping them realize their visions for sculpture when mainly they specialize in doing 2D stuff.

Robert is very hands on, so he’s sculpting, he’s working on these things, and painting at the studio, and really putting a lot of himself into it.  But he was brought through by a friend and I saw these designs. And he had drawn these beautiful orthographic images.  One was "Diamond in a Goat’s Ass" with the butler holding a platter with a goat on it with a diamond shoved in its ass.  "Brute Waste" was another, which is one of his re-occurring characters from a lot of his paintings, holding the globe up, with a blow-torch underneath it.  Those were produced and were at the Shafrazi Gallery in New York.  And I believe there was an edition of about three to five on each of those pieces.  Now there are two others in that series of four sculptures and one of the other ones is this "Rapacious Wheel" here, which we wanted to bring down to Comic-Con.
You know Robert has deep roots in this show, going back to Zap Comics and...

Coochy Cooty!
Meyer:  Yes, and Ed [Big Daddy] Roth.  One of the great things about Robert and his art is it all means something, there’s a story, there’s an irony, there’s a satire in all of his work. So when I saw his work come through Gentle Giant, I said 'This has to be done.'

My friend that brought him over and I underwrote the first two sculptures.  And it was a great success, and they did well, and we ended up doing an edition of them.  We also did some smaller sizes as well, in bronze, so this one will probably end up in bronze as well.

How big are those editions?
Meyer:  They’re under ten.  They’re very limited.  The fourth, that isn’t finished yet, is "Jockey, Riding his Own Tongue" so, it’s crazy.  These things are kind of hard to take in and handle, and it was almost a bit of an experiment bringing this down, because it’s unlike anything that is here.

It’s great, coming in the door, and boom!
Meyer:  Yeah, ‘Boom!’ and there it is.  So you know, I wanted to get Robert back into Comic-Con, and he’s got a documentary about him, (Robert Williams) Mr. Bitchin’, which is going to be shown on Saturday.  And I just built up a friendship with Robert as well, working with him and being a fan of all of the work that he has done.

We’ve been doing Comic-Con, Gentle Giant has had this space, for over the last ten years.  It’s such an incredible forum for over 100,000 people walking through that are superfans, or people who appreciate art and creativity, and he’s got such deep roots that I wanted to have him here and showcase him.

Are there going to be any bigger editions or is it going to be all this super-limited kind of thing?
Meyer:  This is interesting, because we’ve talked about doing more stuff.  But he’s very pessimistic about his own work, where, I don’t know, I see that it has great appeal.  So I don’t know, we’ll see.
 
He’s been around for 40 years, so there are a lot of fans out there.
Meyer:  Yeah, definitely.  And he also transcends the Hot Rod culture, that’s his hobby, so these sculptures have a lot of reflection of his Hot Rod passion as well.
 
So far it’s been great having him here.  I mean he’s right there you can see him, you can step over and talk to him yourself...
 
Robert Williams.  Talk a little bit about your relationship with Gentle Giant and what you’re doing with them.
Williams:  Well, I’m just very fortunate to meet Karl Meyer, and he took on five of my projects and he took them when no one else would.  Their fabrication location, the venue where they do the fabricating, is top notch, scientifically with technology, computer technology.  They took five very complex sculptures and made them reality.
 
So did they start out as sculptures or as paintings?
Williams:  They started out as drawings for proposed sculptures.  They were meant to be sculptures, they were meant to be seen in 360 degrees.
 
What was your involvement in taking it from the drawing to the final rendition.
Williams:  Well, the relationship between an artist and a fabrication house is generally just supplying them with the information about the art.  But I’m enormously hands on, I’m there working with the other fellas.  I carved all the teeth, the computer wouldn’t read those teeth.  I carved 192 teeth in that thing; I carved it by hand.  They were carved out of foam.
 
And then they take that and cast it?
Williams:  Well, yeah, they put hardener on it and later it’s cast.  There’s an enormous amount of steel in that thing.  It’s a very involved process.  There are female molds for that.  That was made to be sold in editions; that’s not just one.  You’ll see a lot of things around here, a lot of sculptures and what-not, that are nothing but foam with hardener on them and painted.  But this has actually got female molds so that a number of them can be supplied.
 
So they took on five sculptures, and how many have been produced so far?
Williams:  This is the fourth one and the fifth one is in the process of being worked on now. These were designed to be shown in the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York.  It’s one of the biggest galleries in the world.  The gallery is actually museum size, it’s enormous.  These hold up well in New York, they’re very well received in the fine arts world.  I have to thank Karl Meyer at Gentle Giant for working with me.