Visiting Artist: Robert Ebendorf

March 31, 2011
Richmond Center for Visual Arts, room 2008
5:30 p.m.

"A Continual Creative Journey"

Born in Kansas in 1938, Robert Ebendorf recalls that his mother took him to weekly arts and crafts sessions in Topeka where he glued together shells and wrapped string around wine bottles. His father took him to visit his grandparents, laboring away in their tailor shop, setting for him examples of craftspeople doing precision work that would adorn the body. His received a bachelor's and master's from the University of Kansas. He also studied in Norway as a Fulbright Fellow and where, for a year, he studied jewelry design courtesy of a grant from the Tiffany Foundation. In 1969, Ebendorf - with several colleagues co-founded the Society of North American Goldsmiths. Throughout Ebendorf's established career - his work has taken him to various teaching posts at Stetson University, the University of Georgia, SUNY New Platz, as a guest professor at the University of West England, U.K., and since 1996, to East Carolina University, where he is the Carol Grotnes Belk Distinguished Professor in the department of art. His work can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Le Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Montreal and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and has also been the subject of a retrospective at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian. Ebendorf and his wife, Aleta Braun, a painter and mixed media artist, live in Greenville, North Carolina.