Sacramento State art professor, Robert Ortbal, 52, was one of the two artists awarded the Leff-Davis Fund for Visual Artists in October from the Sacramento Region Community Foundation.

Ortbal received $4,175 to help him create seven to 10 sculptures and installation works for a gallery located in Sacramento.

The grant organization was created two years ago.

There will be two shows, one in JAYJAY Gallery and the other at Beatnik Studios in September 2015, a year after receiving the grant.

“There is a thread between all the works – a dialogue,” Ortbal wrote in a press release. “I like bringing the work out of the space. It’s not just a collection, but a collective work that talks to each other.”

The San Jose native attended West Valley College majoring in geography but quickly switched gears after taking a ceramics course.

Ortbal was doing a process at the time known as Raku firing. That is where the artist fires the ceramic form with glaze and pulls it out while it’s still hot and post fires the piece.

“It was very theatrical, dramatic and exciting, and I realized I could get college credit for playing with fire,” Ortbal said.

In 1989, the artist received his Master of Fine Arts from UC Davis. Before attending though, Ortbal had the opportunity to travel to Australia and New Zealand.

“I traveled with slides of my artwork and gave slide shows and demonstrations,” he said.

He is known for using everyday materials such as cardboard and styrofoam to explore the hidden meanings through his creations.

“Materials can start suggesting the content for the work and it adds another powerful meaning by changing material,” he said.

The National Endowment for the Arts funded a research project for Ortbal to travel to Europe to examine artwork; mainly grand chandeliers from the Rococo and Art Nouveau time periods.

“I created a very large chandelier and I substituted song for light. Where each candle would be, I had a mechanized song bird,” said Ortbal.

The exhibit is now at UC Berkeley’s Art Museum.

The artist then began teaching art at Sac State in 2009.

“I wanted to learn about art and combine it with social work. I have a lot of fun and I am able to think outside my box. It’s challenging but he’s a great teacher,” said Sondra Lanford, a social work major.

Students enjoy working with their hands and learning new things about art in his class.

“The class is really informative. It’s my first class, he knows a lot and I have fun in the class,” said Kacie Blackman, 22, a studio art major.

For his upcoming show in 2015, Ortbal is currently working on two big art installations. Part of the grant will go towards renting lifting equipment.

“One of the pieces will hang down from the 35-foot-high ceiling on 1/4 steel rods suspending hundreds of carved iceberg-like forms surfaced on one side with a tender moss green material,” he said. “Another piece uses 20-foot lengths of PVC to make a spire that rises up from a subterranean part of the gallery.”

Ortbal said he is more interested in the unsaid things within his art.

“You know it’s there but there is no tangible proof. It is a hunch or a feeling or what your intuition tells you,” Ortbal said.

UPDATE: This article has been updated to correct the name of the fund Ortbal received.