Opening Up by Robert Baldridge

Object / Conceptual

Published: 23.06.2025

Lately, my work has been focused on the interplay between color, texture, and materiality, and how those ideas can often be simultaneously in harmony and at odds. While a raw oxide finish gives copper a vibrant and colorful surface, it is also unpredictable, extremely fragile, and most disappointingly, impermanent.
In contrast to that, when silver dust is fused to the surface of copper, it creates a durable new skin that resists tarnish. I feel as though there’s something intriguing about this act of covering up, of putting on a face, of masking something that’s beneath the surface. It seems to echo the way many of us are forced to live our lives—having to carefully decide what parts of ourselves to show, and which parts we disguise.