Rob Blair (1968-)
Pictured, clockwise from top left (see below for more information on each):
- Unexpected Beauty, 2017, 2019
- Reflections of Serenity, 2014, 2019
- Lakeside Dream, 2016, 2019
- Subtle Beauty, 2015
- Bold Beauty, 2015
About the art and artist
Digital photos by Akron artist Rob Blair capture a serenity in — and profound respect for — the natural environment. Animals or botanical features are the protagonist of his images, the horizontal format for which suggests the calm expanse of nature, often including water reflections and skies with many subtle gradations of color. The raw images all were captured in our corner of the state. Then the artist adjusted elements of the composition to convey specific moods. Blair says:
"Growing up in Northeast Ohio, I always thought that I had to travel to exotic locations in order to experience true beauty in nature. But as the years passed and I began a family of my own in the Akron area, I slowly grew to see and appreciate the unique and dynamic beauty that comes with each passing season in this place I call home ... with no need to escape or look elsewhere.”
Blair comes from a long line of artists and has won national awards for his nature photography, including from the National Park Foundation. He speaks of the spiritual content of his work, which is highly evocative and ranges from the broad vistas of landscape to macro-photography.
These three digital photos are among those specially selected for patient rooms in the new Summa Health patient tower, and not just for their meditative content. In this environment, where hygiene is critical, our curator chose digitally produced original works which the architect had printed on Willow Glass, a super-thin, super-hard glass which can be thoroughly cleaned without degrading the quality of the image.
More about Unexpected Beauty
Unexpected Beauty
Materials: Digital color photograph, printed on Willow Glass.
Location at Summa Health: Dr. Gary B. and Pamela S. Williams Tower on the Akron Campus (141 North Forge St.), blue neighborhood; various patient rooms on the 2nd, 4th and 6th floors.
More about Reflections of Serenity
Reflections of Serenity
Materials: Digital color photograph, printed on Willow Glass.
Location at Summa Health: Dr. Gary B. and Pamela S. Williams Tower on the Akron Campus (141 North Forge St.), blue neighborhood; various patient rooms on the 2nd, 4th and 6th floors.
More about Lakeside Dream
Lakeside Dream
Materials: Digital color photograph, printed on Willow Glass.
Location at Summa Health: Dr. Gary B. and Pamela S. Williams Tower on the Akron Campus (141 North Forge St.), blue neighborhood; various patient rooms on the 2nd, 4th and 6th floors.
More about Subtle Beauty
Subtle Beauty
Materials: Digital photograph on aluminum, 32” x 48”.
Location at Summa Health: Akron Campus (141 N. Forge St.), red neighborhood, ground-floor hallway leading to Emergency from T elevators.
This work was acquired for the Summa Health System — Akron Campus Wayfinding Project.
This digital photo was taken at the F.A. Seiberling Nature Realm, one of Summit County’s Metroparks, on an early December day. Perched on a sturdy branch, this Northern Cardinal has the duller, protective coloring typical of the female. Nevertheless, we delight in that bright red beak, the expressive red eyebrow feathers, that red crest (very punk!), and splashes of red throughout her yellowish-buff body, wing and tail feathers. Photographer Rob Blair has, as with the paired image Bold Beauty, chosen a shallow depth-of-field to create a blurred background in order to set off his avian star here.
Female cardinals scout and choose nesting sites in the spring (May-June) with the help of the male but build the nest alone, though the male will help with materials. Nests are multi-layered and compact, but rarely re-used. Cardinals have one or two clutches annually, containing 2-5 speckled, whitish eggs that hatch in 11 to 13 days and fledge between one and two weeks.
This watchful female cardinal, despite her subtle coloring, is easily spied in the bare branches of winter shrubs. Blair has emphasized the red tints of the background to set off this beautiful finch and make the red touches in her feathers pop, creating a nuanced composition that marks the red neighborhood of the Wayfinding Project.
You can find other, more whimsical birds in the Summa Collection by checking out the web page for Lynn O’Brien.
More about Bold Beauty
Bold Beauty
Materials: digital photograph on aluminum, 32” x 48”
Location at Summa Health: Akron Campus (141 N. Forge St.), red neighborhood, ground-floor hallway leading to Emergency from T elevators.
This work was acquired for the Summa Health System — Akron Campus Wayfinding Project.
Our Ohio state bird, officially Cardinalis cardinalis, this vividly-plumed male was photographed on a wintery December day near the Oak Hill Trail head in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Rob Blair works extensively in Ohio’s only national park, concentrating on wildlife, including all kinds of birds, and landscapes. You may have recognized his digital landscape photos printed directly on Willow glass in many of the patient rooms in the blue neighborhood on the Summa Health System — Akron Campus. This work has been printed on aluminum, a choice many digital artists are making now for the hard, bright surface and durability.
Blair has captured (figuratively) this gorgeous crested bird perched on a desiccated branch of highbush cranberry arching gracefully on a diagonal across the composition. The artist deliberately chose a shallow depth-of-field in the camera in order to focus our attention on the foremost picture plane. That choice blurs the background, as seen in the several out-of-focus highbush branches behind our star and then in the totally nebulous background. The brilliant color of feathers and beak are repeated, in a lower key, in the drupes that hang in clusters by delicate stems, complicating and enlivening the lines of branches and trunk, all of which make this digital photo an excellent wayfinding red example.
Members of the finch family, cardinals range across the North Americas and are year-round residents (not migrating), once they locate a territory. They nest low in dense shrubbery in wild areas but also in our landscaped yards, then seek out higher perches for singing. Their stout beaks break seeds and cut fruits, and they also eat insects, for which they forage on the ground; they’re compatible with most of the other birds you’ll find at a backyard feeder. They choose the same area for nesting year after year but seldom re-use an old nest.
You can find other, more whimsical birds in the Summa Collection by checking out the web page for Lynn O’Brien.
Where you can see more of this artist’s work: A selection of prints on metal of Robert Blair’s photographs can be seen at the Stow (Ohio) Municipal Court, as well as on his website.