Project on food waste lands Summers in ArtFields

Robert Summers
By Melissa Rollins, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
When ArtFields opened April 20 in Lake City, one piece hanging in The Rob gallery was from an unsuspected place: a forty-some-year-old Coker College student who lives in Lamar. Robert Summers said that he doesn’t consider himself an artist but clearly someone does.
After thirty-years working as a chef, a decade of those years in Costa Rica, Summers said that he got the bug to do something else.
“I was in Costa Rica for about ten years,” Summers said. “My wife and I went on a honeymoon and six months later I was like ‘We’re moving to Costa Rica’ and my wife said all right. The restaurant there just ran its course. I got tired of the restaurant business and decided to go to school for graphic design.”
After enrolling at Florence-Darlington Tech to get some core requirements out of the way, he transferred to Coker College. He is on the way to finishing his Bachelor of Arts with a concentration in graphic design, even earning honors along the way. During his journey he has tinkered with several aspects of art, including photography, which is what was accepted to ArtFields.
“For the past two years, I was in the dark room,” Summers said. “I started with dark room photography and then I did digital. I kind of did it backwards; though, I guess, the old school way I did it forwards. I learned photography doing that analogue photography. I had the 35 mm; every picture counts. You’re spending money on film, on paper; you’re taking your time.”
Summers said that having those limited resources helped him hone his skills.
“It isn’t click, click, click and then you pick which one,” Summers said. “You have to focus on composition and design. That helped with my eye and my composition within digital photography. I still take like 5,000 digital photos, just because I can.”
Professor Jean Grosser, who encouraged Summers and others to enter ArtFields, also has a piece in the competition.
“As a senior, really as any art major, getting your work out there, having it seen, the process of doing that even if it isn’t shown, that is part of it all,” Summers said. “I’ve entered probably a dozen shows and didn’t get chosen but even if you get one accepted that reinforces that you’re doing something right.”
The photo that was chosen for ArtFields is off decomposing brussel sprouts and is part of a larger series entitled, Beautifully Wasted. Summers said that the series focuses on food waste.
“It started with very small abstract photos and then I worked my way into larger ones,” Summers said. “People take what they want from it but if people can look at it and see the beauty and the magnitude of the visceral response, it might be vested in them and then when they open up their fridge, they have a thought about food waste and then maybe they wouldn’t waste that food. Maybe it makes people more aware. I grew up in an orphanage and I knew hunger. We ate but we didn’t eat well. At the time it didn’t occur to me but that why I became a chef: I was hungry.”
Summers’ project took a lot of time, everyday, to get the resulting images.
“I put the food in containers and I hooked up a halogen on timers so it would burn like the sun and get all the moisture,” Summers said. “That moisture would start the process of the decay and the mold. Everyone asked if I manipulated these but other than what I could do in the dark room, I didn’t. I can’t do any better than nature does with making these beautiful colors, these shapes, these organic forms. I took pictures everyday and sometimes it wasn’t that compelling but you have to find something about it that is.”
Starting over, following a new path, Summers said it was his professors who pushed him to get where he is today.
“They saw within me this artist quality and I think in the last three years they’ve pulled that out of me, except I still don’t consider myself an artist,” Summers joked. “I guess I am now that I’m in the show. I guess that makes me an artist; I don’t know.”