Welcome.
In the Spring of 2014, I left New York City, where I lived for the previous decade, and headed west, moving into the house my great-great-grandparents built a century earlier in the Upper Snake Valley of Idaho. With the Grand Teton range resting on the eastern horizon, Yellowstone National Park an hour’s drive away, and Henry’s Fork of the Snake River winding through our one-stoplight town, my wife and I decided to stay.
Creating things is what I have always felt compelled to do. I went to school for illustration and got my degree in fine art with an emphasis in painting and photography. I wanted to learn the rules so I could try to break them. From 1997 to 2007, I worked as a musician, playing bass for VAUX, a six-piece band out of Denver. In our ten years together, we toured across the United States and Europe, recorded albums in Denver, Seattle and London, and signed a major label deal.
Then, in 2004 I moved to New York to pursue a career as a visual artist. My work has been shown in gallery spaces in New York, Copenhagen, Seattle and Denver; in the ACE Hotel and the Museum of Arts & Design in New York City; and on collectors’ walls throughout the United States and Europe. My artwork has also inspired collaborations with brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Hugo Boss and Vice/Bud Light.
In addition to establishing Ryder Evan Robison Studio, in Idaho my wife and I have built a life. We take care of each other, a garden, our land, and a crew of dogs, cats, chickens and rabbits. I create my work in the workshop my grandfather built on the property in 1969, and I volunteer as a firefighter for the same department where he was Chief back in the ’70’s. I still have some of my grandfather’s old leather belts, wallets, and harnesses that he used to work his horses – each handmade piece still holding up, decades later, now hanging on my shop wall.
The connection to my past and my current community, my years as a touring musician, the daily inspiration I pull from the landscape outside my front door – these all come together to influence my current work: Hand crafted leather goods, imprinted with my artwork, that not only serve a purpose but will hold meaning for years to come.
A lifetime of stories that can fit in your back pocket.
Thanks for being here.
— Ryder Evan Robison
