Soon after Jim Robertson graduated from his Houston high school, he joined the Army and served our country for three years—two of those in Vietnam. After returning to the states, he earned a BFA from University of Houston and an MFA from University of Texas, Austin. His education and art career began in painting and drawing, and his works have been shown in numerous galleries and museums, including Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. While continuing to paint, his interests gradually turned toward three-dimensional works. In the early 1990s, he took metal working classes at The Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, welding at Lone Star College and began experimenting with steel and found metal objects. Robertson says, “I spent a lot of time cruising industrial salvage yards and had access to several dumpsters at metal fabrication shops.” His works are figurative and evolve from one or two “starter” pieces, where he begins selecting or modifying more pieces to reinforce the original theme suggested by the starter piece. He says, “A few subjects reoccur in my work: surrealistic vehicles, fanciful weapons, animals and architectural structures.” Other works are conceived from scratch, without found objects—non-objective and more formal in nature—using readily available steel material, such as “Zig Zag,” his bright teal, monolithic sculpture for True North 2022. Robertson was Professor of Art at Lone Star College for 29 years, retiring in 2009. He has a full-time studio in Trinity and is often spotted cruising the art car scene in his sleek and futuristic stainless steel creation, Jet Car. Following his lifelong passion for architecture, "Sanctuary" is a mashup of architectural icons—Egyptian pyramids, Gothic pointed arches and towering minarets. With its almost ghostly translucence, the artist has chosen bright teal to pop against its natural background.