Featured Artist: Rob Merwath

Tell us your name, your Etsy shop name, and what city you live in.
My name is Rob Merwarth and I am the CEO of Playnature Productions™. Our corporate headquarters is in Lakewood, Ohio, with many satellite locations across the globe.

The history of the name playnature is a bit uncertain, but definitely classified anyway.

What is it that draws you to creating?
As far back as I can remember, the toys that interested me the most were hands-on and had a constructive nature; I was heavy into Legos, Lite Brite, and Spirograph. The best part about the beach for me was always sand tunneling and sand castling. I spent a great amount of time growing up trying out different creative outlets. I continued on to get a degree in fine art photography. Photography is perfect for me.

How would you describe the style of your mandalas?
Nature photography to me is a way of searching through the world and picking out the best spots, the way you flip through an old issue of National Geographic to clip out a image for a collage. Nature mandalas are twice that. After the initial search and discover comes the second phase, searching within the frame to find the “slice” of image that will make the most interesting tessellated pattern. The main aim above all else is to try to create a finished image that is soothing, invigorating, and intoxicating.

What are your inspirations?
In respect to photography, my inspiration is nature. Light and color play a giant part in my compositional decision making.

In respect to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, many things inspire me (creativity is contagious in my opinion).

Do you have an all-time favorite creation? What about it makes it your favorite?
Actually my favorite all-time creation is an abstract painting I created in my junior year of college. I devised a method and painting layers upon layers of acrylic in a way that stacked like a sandwich, but remained somewhat wet still, and then, after 20 or so layers, using a printer’s squeegee to wipe away that which remained wet and left what had dried so far. To me it was very topographical. In this particular piece the colors just killed me.

Describe your workspace.
Unfortunately a lot of my work these days uses light and pixels and things that are not really tangible. My two main workspaces are the rectangular frame of the camera viewfinder and the rectangular computer monitor.

What is your favorite task related to your work? Your least favorite?
“My favorite part was everything.”

Do you have artistic talents in other areas?
I draw (inaccurately), paint (poorly), play guitar (miserably), write (riddled with errors), and dance (flail and seizure). But I enjoy it all!

Tell us something about you that we might be surprised to hear.
One time I got in a very shady situation with famous photographer Arthur Tress. After a one-on-one photo shoot with him, he tried to convince me to be his boy-toy and move in with in him! Yipes!

Where can we find your work?
You can find my work within the bustling global marketplace that is etsy.com (playnature.etsy.com).

And I’m sure many museums are sending me purchase orders. The last time I called the Guggenheim, the receptionist assured me the check was in the mail.

However you don’t have to be a NY hotshot to see my work. I have remained humble and true to my roots, and show locally in the Cleveland area as well.