From a Rochester robot maker comes stunning works of art

Rochester artist Mike Fortier stands in front of two of his works. (Courtesy photo)

ROCHESTER - Mike Fortier of Rochester may make a living building robots, but his passion is his artwork, stunningly crafted cubist works of art that you might not think possible from a man whose career is so steeped in engineering and science.

Many of his works are on display through the end of this month at the Franklin Gallery at RiverStones Custom Framing on North Main Street.

Fortier is the founder and President of Mikrolar, Inc. of Hampton, makers of high precision positioning systems - known popularly as robots - for use in a wide variety of biomedical and industrial applications.

Another of Mike Fortier's cubist works. (courtesy image)

Suffice it to say it's pretty heady stuff. His robots can do pretty much anything in three-dimensional space.

"We build six degree of freedom robots," he says. "This includes X,Y,Z and their three rotations."

Given that Fortier is no stranger around the abstract, it's probably no surprise that his lifelong love of art settled on the themes of cubism while he was in college.

"I've been drawing all my life," he says. "I'll paint any style. I've practiced the old masters, but around my early college days I really discovered cubism."

Cubism came into art's mainstream with the works of Pablo Picasso in the early 20^th century, with a desire to represent three-dimeensional forms on canvas.

Fortier says it almost makes painting akin to sculpture.

"Instead of just depicting a front view, you try to show many sides," he says. "It's not all visual, either. It's also contextual.

As he puts it, "The idea is to use painting to describe more than the visual aspect, but also the overall understanding to show many side of the subject. It's like sculpting through painting."

The result is breathtaking, often enigmatic works of art that must be studied rather than viewed.

Fortier said he got hooked on cubism almost 40 years ago.

Mike Fortier's 'Guardian Angel' piece (Courtesy image)

"I went to a Picasso exhibit in Washington in the '70s, and I was hooked," he said.

While not in it for the money, he said occasionally he is commissioned to produce a specific work of art.

One he vividly remembers is when a family who had lost a young daughter asked him to draw a picture of her.

They gave him dozens of pictures of her, one in which she was taking a selfie.

"They wanted me to do an interpretation," he said. "In one of the pictures she was taking a selfie and you could see she had a tattoo of a guardian angel. I drew the guardian angel protecting her."

Fortier explained that much of cubism is rooted in the artist's attempt to make a statement beyond the image.

"When your painting and searching, there comes a time you're trying to express a particular thing," he said.