Bob Justin, a self taught outsider artist, was born in New Jersey in 1941. After being forced into retirement in 1991 by illness, he began to liquidate an old tool collection and other property at local flea markets. During this time he returned to a childhood penchant for finding imagery in everyday objects. By combining various antique found objects, or what he calls the refuse of society, he would create what he calls “critters”, animal or human faces or forms set forth in found object wall masks or standing sculptures.
Justin’s style, as described by an Assistant Curator from the New Jersey State Museum, Allison Weld, ranges from the minimal to obsessive and expresionistic, and his pieces vary thusly from obsessively adorned objects to simple spare masks and sculptures. But for later bronze works and oil finger paintings his art is all constructed from found objects. The more heavily adorned pieces are often covered with memorabilia in the style of the traditional “southern memory pot”. His simpler pieces, particularly his wall masks, have been described, by Joseph Picard of the Home News Tribune, as showing a heavy West African influence. Regardless of the style, his found art sculptures are almost always metaphors for the figure or face which project an unpretentious human quality. It is these secondary images Justin perceives in the everyday item which the artist states as the source of his vision that forms the artwork, and which has been called his muse.
Justin displayed his first such piece, a combination of an antique wooden chair and pick axe head called “Texas Longhorn”, by his table at the flea market on a whim and was surprised when someone offered to purchase it as it was not for sale. But prodded by the buyers insistence and necessity he sold it. Other pieces followed and so did more buyers. One of these buyers was Dorothy Spencer, the Curator for the Arts America Project for the USIA. Her interest resulted in several of Mr. Justin’s work being shown on an international tour under the Arts America Program of the United States Information Agency. Soon after other pieces of his work were shown by a local gallery. This led to his work being discovered by noted collector and board member of the American Museum of Folk Art, Christina Johnson, of the Johnson and Johnsons. Her collecting of Justin’s art soon brought the notice of the wider art world and various awards and honors. At this time Justin’s work also led him to meet be introduced to renowned sculptor Isaac Witkin, among other luminaries in the art world. Witkin and Justin became friends and remained close, with Witkin becoming a mentor to Justin, until Mr. Witkin’s death in 2006.
Subsequently Justin’s work received yet broader attention, including a one man show in the prestigious Eisenhower Hall Theater of the United States Military Academy of West Point New York and a one man show in the Trenton State Museum and showings in the important Outsider Art Fair, sponsored by the American Museum of Folk Art, New York, New York and the influential Laumeir Sculpture Park, St. Louis, Missouri. Currently, public collections of his work exist in the permanent collections of the Plainsboro Township, New Jersey municipal buildings, Bloomfield College, Bloomfield, New Jersey, the American Cyanamid Corporation, West Windsor, New Jersey, and the permanent collection of the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, New Jersey and at the artist's website, bobjustin.com.
