Bio: Christopher Robin Mohler
"New York and Chicago move over. With his usual panache,
sculptor Chris Mohler has upped the ante on exhibition possibilities
for the Short North...Mohler has always seemed a bit possessed.
Formidable in size, seriousness, and temperment, Mohler has
earned the art community's respect over the last five years through
hard work, persistence of vision, and total dedication to the art
process." Lesley Constable, The Columbus Dispatch, 1990.
A rebel at heart, Chris Mohler labors day and night in his downtown studio
cutting and welding metal into fantastic figures and symbolic images. One of Columbus's few full time artists, the 6'8" behemoth sculptor can wield a torch with both intensity and whimsy, making art, he says "because he has to." He began as a curious child bent on building wild objects, and he developed through the nurturing of a writer-actress mother who taught him to draw outside the lines, ignore mainstream conventions, and absorb himself in his work. She also urged him to see the world in a new way, without fear of criticism or rejection. Two years after her death from cancer, when Chris was only fifteen, he claimed himself as an artist. He has never wavered from that declaration.
Today at age 35, following years of training at Kent State University and the Maryland Institute of Art, Chris has established himself as a highly collectible and respected artist. His work can be found in collections as far away as San Diego, Boston, and New York or as close to home as the Columbus Metropolitan Library, Bexley businesses, or residences in Upper Arlington, Victorian Village, and New Albany.
Mohler believes in himself and his work. "Art" he says. "must convey ideas and enrich the public. It must entice and propel the viewer into sharing that environment. The public should not walk away in immediate acceptance and minimal thought. Art must nurture the imagination, encouraging the viewer to look, to examine, to grow, and to know that creative thought can answer problems and propel us forward into the future. Imagination is the bridge to other dimensions."
And critics agrees: "Mohler's art is all about a type of magic shared in public space...the personal yet universal act of discovery." writes Constable. Other critics, including Jacqueline Hall, have hailed Mohlers's work as "dynamic," "wonderful," and conveying superb control." While the rest of us sleep, Mohler labors in his cavernous studio carving his way into posterity.
